Title: The case for resilience: a comparative analysis

Authors: John Harrald

Addresses: Center for Community Security and Resiliency, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA 22203, USA

Abstract: The utility of the concept of resiliency as a paradigm for managing society's ability to resist, absorb, and recover from extreme events is dependent upon the ability to evaluate a community's resilience and to assess the potential impacts of intentional and unintentional interventions. A framework for developing and using resilience metrics is presented. The critical components of resilience for three diverse Atlantic coastal communities subject to potential catastrophic coastal flooding are developed, described, and compared using this framework. The analysis demonstrates that, although the three areas face a common threat, they should adopt different resilience enhancing strategies that are determined by local structural, economic, and social conditions.

Keywords: resilience; natural hazards; coastal flooding; extreme events; intervention impacts; community resiliency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCIS.2012.046550

International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, 2012 Vol.8 No.1, pp.3 - 21

Published online: 31 Jul 2014 *

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