What is resilience?

Resilience can mean many different things to different people, depeding on the context in which it is applied. Sometimes, resilience is understood as a ‘static’ attribute of a system or community that allows the them to withstand shocks and ‘bounce back’ to a stable pre-disaster state as fast as possible. This is usually termed ‘engineering resilience’ – as it is usually applied in the engineering context – and assumes that there is only one stable state in which a system can exist.

A similar concept to ‘engineering resilience’ is ‘ecosystem resilience’ or ‘social resilience’ (sometimes also called ‘multi-equilibria-resilience’). This resilience concept acknowledges that there can be multiple stable states for a system or community and that it might be necessary to ‘bounce forward’ to a different – better – state that allows the system or community to better cope with future disasters; this is called adaptation.

In contrast, ‘social-ecological resilience’ (sometimes also called ‘evolutionary resilience’) takes a more dynamic perspective, where social and ecological systems are seen as linked and co-evolving. While ‘engineering resilience’ and ‘ecosystem resilience’ see resilience as an attribute that one either has or has not, ‘social-ecological resilience’ treats resilience as a continuous process that needs to account for uncertainty and include flexibility, learning and the advancement of capacities and abilities to withstand future shocks. This means that there is never a ‘final state’ for ‘social-ecological resilience’, and that there is always room – and need – for advancement. This is the view taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

“Resilience in this report is defined as the capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure as well as biodiversity in case of ecosystems while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation. Resilience is a positive attribute when it maintains such a capacity for adaptation, learning, and/or transformation.”

Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers, p. 5

However, when talking about resilience, it is also necessary to talk about social justice, because impacts from hazardous events, trends, or disturbances are ultimately experienced by people. Socially just resilience therefore needs to ackowledge that communities can be heterogenious, exhibiting diverse needs, capacities, and levels of power. More specifically, this means recoognizing the need for

distributive justice which refers to the allocation of burdens and benefits among individuals, nations and generations;
procedural justice which refers to who decides and participates in decision-making; and
recognition which entails basic respect and robust engagement with and fair consideration of diverse cultures and perspectives.

This is even more true when talking about resilience of historic areas, where a multitude of different interestes come together.

On top of these considerations, resilience in the context of historic areas needs to acknowledge the specific characteristics of these areas and recognise the need to balance socially just response and adaptation with a need to maintain the historic area’s identity, integrity, and authenticity.

ARCH therefore adopts the following definition of resilience of historic areas:

Resilience of historic areas

“The sustained ability of a historic area as a social-ecological system (including its social, cultural, political, economic dimensions, as well as built and natural environments) to cope with hazardous events by responding and adapting in socially just ways that maintain the historic area’s functions and heritage significance (including identity, integrity and, authenticity).”

This definition specifically acknowledges that

historic areas are social-ecological systems made-up of more than just the built environment;
that resilience is a continuous process that needs to be sustained, i.e. there is no ‘final state’ for resilience;
resilience is dynamic and once a hazardous events has occured, this needs to be seen as potential for the systema and community to adapt, learn, and transform;
any response and adaptation needs to be socially just, i.e. it needs to “account for the degree to which the community comes into contact with a hazard capable of causing harm; the amount of inherent susceptibility to harm in that community; and the extent to which people in the community are able to make adjustments in order to avoid negative consequences, recognising existing imbalances in power distribution in that community and ensuring that neither the impact of the hazard, nor the policies and actions themselves exacerbate existing or create new inequalities across different groups.”; and
that any response and adaptation to maintain a historic areas function needs also to be balanced with the historic area’s heritage significance, thus bridging the gap between resilience and heritage management.