Measuring social resilience

Trade-offs, challenges and opportunities for indicator models in transforming societies

Bibliographic Data

ID22029268
AuthorsSamantha Copeland (0000-0002-6946-7165, Delft University of Technology, corresponding author), Tina Comes (0000-0002-8721-8314, Delft University of Technology), Sylvia Bach (0009-0000-8673-5929, University of Wuppertal), Michael Nagenborg (0000-0001-8271-5883, University of Twente), Yannic Schulte (0000-0002-5577-5618, University of Wuppertal), Neelke Doorn (0000-0002-1090-579X, Delft University of Technology)
Year2020
Volume51
Pages101799
Publication date2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2212-4209
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101799
OpenAlexW3048748786
LanguageEN
Citations received33
References cited63

More than any other facet of resilience, social resilience raises the inherent tension within the concept between identity or persistence, and transformation. Is a community the people who make it up, or the geography or physical infrastructure they share? What about the resilience of communities that transform, as a result of a sudden disaster or over time? In this paper, we explore the impact of this tension on how social resilience indicators can be developed and used. Beginning with a close look at the ways in which our concepts of resilience and our use of indicators interact, several points are raised. First, that how we identify a community and frame its resilience conveys particular conceptualisations of resilience, which in turn have normative implications for the communities themselves. In part, this is because of the difficulty in capturing important adaptations and transformative actions within and by those communities. Further, measuring and comparing the resilience of communities, and aspects of quantification that go along with selecting, aggregating and comparing indicator values, ensure that the decisions made about how indicators ought to be used carry normative weight. Through this exploration, we identify several normative implications of choices in indicator design and application. We conclude with recommendations for moving forward with greater transparency and responsibility toward those communities whose social resilience we hope to measure in order to improve

Business · Community resilience · Computer security · Economics · Environmental resource management · Normative · Political science · Psychological resilience · Sociology · Transformative learning · Computer Science · Disaster Management and Resilience · Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance