p.3-4 Disaster Resilience: Building Capacity to Co-exist with Natural Hazards
and Their Consequences... In this book, the focus is on managing risk through influencing the consequences of hazard
exposure. It does so by identifying factors that influence a capacity for co-existence with periodically hazardous,
but often beneficial, environmental elements. This involves developing a capability to sustain societal
processes should disaster occur through the proactive development of a capacity to adapt or adjust to the
consequences of hazard activity.
p.5-6 That developing a capacity for co-existence with natural hazards is
feasible, is evident from observation of communities that face regular exposure to hazard activity... when a need
to confront hazard consequences prevails, adaptive mechanisms can be established within the fabric of a society...
The hazards that communities will face will change over time... Clearly, understanding the hazards that represent
the source of adaptive pressures is an important activity.
p.7 This book is concerned with identifying the values, beliefs, competencies,
resources and procedures that societies and their members can call upon to facilitate their capacity to adapt to these circumstances
[JLJ - hazards] and sustain societal functions in the face of significant perturbations to the fabric of everyday community
life. That is, to identify that factors that makes societies and their members resilient.
p.8 In this book, resilience is a measure of how well people and
societies can adapt to a changed reality and capitalize on the new possibilities offered... the definition of resilience
used here embodies the notion of adaptive capacity... Neither a capacity to adapt nor a capacity
for post-disaster growth and development will happen by chance.
p.95 This is not... simply a list of types of losses but an indicative list
of vulnerabilities; what people and communities have to lose... resilience may be subdivided into the capacity to withstand
loss in these areas or to recover from this loss.
p.144 In this chapter I argue that disasters are social phenomena.
Consequently, protective behaviors are acquired and actualized in social contexts. From this point of departure
I shall develop the argument that behaviors that are protective for a community are not necessarily those that maximize
any given individual's protection.
p.155 Disasters by their nature unfold in ways
that are not entirely predictable. Responses need to be flexible.
p.156 [Figure 9.3 chart of "response generation" shows "Facilitating
Factors" and "Blocking Factors"]
p.156-157 The effects of a disaster will be mitigated to the degree
that is a function of the proportion of a community who are able to respond with appropriate protective behaviors.
p.166 In their study of the aftermath of Red River flood in Canada in 1997,
Buckland and Rahman (1999) found that, of the three communities studied, the community that was better resourced and organized
and had greater internal capacity (community competence), was better placed to cope with the flood... Other components of
resilience have emerged from the hazard planning... literature. Utilizing an ecological approach, Tobin (1999) developed a
conceptual framework for understanding how sustainable and resilient communities may be created. He describes these communities
as those that are low risk, low vulnerability, have ongoing planning initiatives, ... have independent and interdependent
social networks and appropriate planning... Tobin's (1999) conceptual framework combines three theoretical models. the first
is a mitigation model which involves reducing risk in the community through the use of design standards and policies. The
second is a recovery model... The third is a structural-cognitive model which incorporates issues to do with structural (societal)
changes, situational factors... and cognitive ... variables.
p.166-167 Paton et al. (2001) evaluated the structural-cognitive element
of Tobin's (1999) model in relation adapting to volcanic hazard effects... The results reiterated the role of self-efficacy
and problem-focused coping as indicators of psychological resilience.
p.168 Given that individuals and communities co-exist in a state
of dynamic equilibrium, understanding resilience requires that the nature of this interaction be taken into account.
p.191 In discussing ecological systems, Holling (1973) defined resilience
as "the capacity of a system to absorb and utilize or even benefit from perturbations and changes that attain it, and so persist
without a qualitative change in the system's structure" (p.9). More recently, the concept has been defined as "the
potential of a system to remain in a particular configuration and to maintain its feedbacks and functions, and involves the
ability of the system to reorganize following disturbance-driven change" (Walker et al. 2002, p. 14)."
p.203 Klein, Nicholls and Thomalla (2003) concluded that resilience
relates to those properties of the system that [influence] adaptive capacity (preparing for, planning for and managing
hazards)
p.228 In general I define economic resilience
as the ability or capacity of a system to absorb or cushion itself against damage or loss (see also Rose,
2004b). A more general definition that incorporates dynamic considerations, including stability, is the ability of
a system to recover from a severe shock to achieve a desired state. I also distinguish two types of resilience in
each context:
Inherent - ability under normal circumstances
(e.g., the ability of individual firms to substitute other inputs for those curtailed by an external shock, or the ability
of markets to reallocate resources in response to price signals).
Adaptive - ability in crisis situations due to ingenuity
or extra effort (e.g., increasing input substitution possibilities in individual business operations, or strengthening
the market by providing information to match suppliers with customers).
p.302 Community resilience is enhanced indirectly through the provision
of many services, safeguards and structures... Resilience is hazard, community and temporally specific. Resilience
needs constant enhancement and capacity building
p.316 The assessment and development of adaptive capacity is a dynamic
and iterative process.
