Resilient Community: A concept and vision for community action, city planning and state policy for the 21st century (original) (raw)

DECIPHERING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE: A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF DEFINITIONS

Industrial Engineering Journal, 2024

Community resilience is a multifaceted concept that isn't easily refined into explicit knowledge. Researchers generally agree that it relies on various elements that shape a community's overall resilience to disaster risks. While there's growing attention from academic, governmental, industrial, and charitable sectors on initiatives aimed at bolstering community resilience against disasters, there's still on-going debate about the precise definition and fundamental traits of community resilience. In our systematic literature review focusing on definitions of community resilience concerning disasters, we analysed a total of 70 relevant papers using inductive thematic analysis. This method enabled us to flexibly explore and extract insights from the data, particularly valuable for investigating novel or under-explored topics where established theories may be insufficient. Although a universally accepted definition of community resilience remained abstract, our research undertook a systematic review to explore the diverse interpretations of this concept within the context of disasters. Our objective was to comprehensively examine the array of definitions found in the literature and identifies the various constituent elements proposed to underpin community resilience. To achieve this, we initially categorized the definitions into three primary parameters for further analysis. These parameters encompassed definitions that portrayed community resilience as an on- going 'process' of adaptation and change, those focusing on the 'characteristics' inherent to resilient communities, and those delineating 'attributes'—specific qualities or factors contributing to a community's overall resilience.. Our research findings highlight that community resilience is interpreted and utilized diversely across various research groups, contributing to its ambiguous nature. However, despite these differences in interpretation and application, certain aspects are consistently recognized as crucial for building resilience within communities. This nuanced distribution shows the multifaceted nature of resilience, emphasizing that it is not a singular concept but rather a combination of various dimensions. The paper further focuses on understanding and interpreting these parameters and their interplay which is crucial for developing effective interventions and strategies to enhance community resilience. Thus the authors further confirm that instead of attempting to establish a singular definition and approach to studying community resilience, it may be more beneficial to concentrate on understanding and addressing the parameters that are widely acknowledged as essential for fostering resilience within communities. Keywords: