Academic literature on the topic 'Resilience theory'

<p>During recent years, resilience theory – originally developed in systems ecology – has advanced as a new approach to sustainable development. However, it is still more of an academic theory than a discourse informing environmental politics. The aim of this essay is to study resilience theory as a potential environmental discourse in the making and to outline the political implications it might induce. To gain a more comprehensive knowledge of resilience theory, I study it in relation to already existing environmental discourses. Following earlier research on environmental discourses I define the discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism as occupying the discursive space of environmental politics. Further, I define six central components as characteristics for all environmental discourses. Outlining how both the existing environmental discourses and resilience theory relates to these components enables an understanding of both the political implications of resilience theory and of resilience theory as an environmental discourse in relation to existing environmental discourses. The six central discourse components I define are 1) the view on the nation-state; 2) the view on capitalism; 3) the view on civil society; 4) the view on political order; 5) the view on knowledge; 6) the view on human-nature relations. By doing an empirical textual analysis of academic texts on resilience theory I show that resilience theory assigns a limited role for the nation-state and a very important role for civil society and local actors when it comes to environmental politics. Its view on local actors and civil society is closely related to its relativist view on knowledge. Resilience theory views capitalism as a root of many environmental problems but with some political control and with changing perspectives this can be altered. Furthermore, resilience theory seems to advocate a weak bottom-up perspective on political order. Finally, resilience theory views human-nature relations as relations characterized by human adaptation to the prerequisites of nature. In conclusion, I argue that the empirical analysis show that resilience theory, as an environmental discourse, to a great extent resembles a subdivision of civic environmentalism called participatory multilateralism.</p>

Master of Landscape Architecture<br>Department of Landscape Architecture, Regional and Community Planning<br>Blake Belanger<br>Landscape architects are challenged with finding appropriate solutions to adequately address the dynamic nature of urban environments. In the 1970's C.S. Holling began to develop resilience theory, which is intended to provide a holistic understanding of the way socio-ecological systems change and interact across scales. Resilience theory addresses the challenges and complexities of contemporary urban environments and can serve as a theoretical basis for engaging urban design practice. To test the validity of resilience theory as a theoretical basis for urban design, this thesis is an exploration of the addition of resilience theory to current landscape architecture literature and theory through a three-part methodology: a literature review that spans a breadth of research, case study analyses, and an application of resilience theory through a design framework in two projective design experiments. The resilience framework bridges between complex theory and design goals/strategies in a holistic approach. Through the identification of key connections in the reviewed literature that situate the relevance of resilience theory to landscape architecture and the subsequent case study analysis, specific methods for applying resilience theory to urban design practice are defined within the proposed framework. These methods fit within five main categories: identify and respond to thresholds, promote diversity, develop redundancies, create multi-scale networks and connectivity, and implement adaptive planning/management/design practices. The framework is validated by the success of the projective design application in the winning 2013 ULI/Hines Urban Design Competition entry, The Armory. Resilience theory and the proposed design framework have the potential to continue to advance the prominence of landscape architecture as the primary leader in urban design practice.

Master of Landscape Architecture<br>Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning<br>Blake Belanger<br>Resilience in social-ecological systems, defined by ecologist C.S. Holling (1973), is the persistence of systems after a disturbance. This theory of resilience is becoming increasingly important, especially in urban areas where human systems dominate. Therefore, creating resilient social-ecological systems is emerging as a focus for many landscape architects when designing urban landscapes. Researchers and practitioners have created frameworks and strategies for applying resilience theory, but designers are still lacking tangible methods they can use to implement design strategies to create resilient landscapes. This research presents a set of resilient design strategies, so landscape architects can have a tool to design generally resilient social-ecological systems in urban areas. In order to discover strategies which improve system resilience, I conducted a literature review and created a perceptual model of the social-ecological systems operating in the study site, Washington Square Park in Kansas City, Missouri. The perceptual model determined systems and system components I focused on in this research. These systems are soil, water, vegetation, fauna, and people. Strategies suggested by Jack Ahern (2011), Brian Walker and David Salt (2006), and Kevin Cunningham (2013) for creating resilience determined strategies which were applied to the system components in order to evaluate the park for resilience. The strategies suggested are modularity, redundancy, tight feedbacks, and ecosystem services. In addition, the system components and strategies were used to analyze case studies. I used strategies discovered in the case study analyses along with goals for the redesign of Washington Square Park, discovered by analyzing the site and previous park documents, to create the guidelines. I then used the guidelines to create a design proposal for the park. The current state of the system components in the park and the proposed state from the redesign were used to show the guidelines’ success in increasing the general resilience of Washington Square Park. These guidelines have potential to increase resilience in other urban civic spaces through a similar methodology I used for Washington Square Park. In addition, the guidelines have the potential to further research in applying resilience theory to the design of landscapes.

<p> Assessing and developing organizational or collective resilience capacity is a strengths-based approach to managing continuous and unexpected change as a strategic capability. In this study, organizational resilience capacity is defined as a vital readiness that is built up by employee beliefs and behaviors. Human resource and management interventions have been recommended to strengthen this capacity. These are described as antecedents, enablers, and inducements designed to foster vital conditions that support relevant employee beliefs, feelings, and actions. Yet, there is little empirical evidence about which specific beliefs and behaviors to foster and no tool for assessing their strength. Interventions, then, cannot reliably be said to strengthen organizational resilience capacity. To address this gap, an exploratory, quantitative study was designed with two objectives: (a) identify specific employee beliefs and behaviors associated with this capacity from the organizational resilience literature and (b) design a scale using these items to explore how collective resilience capacity is constructed. After testing the Organizational Resilience Capacity Scale with employees in a manufacturing company (<i>n</i>=223), results suggested that there are specific beliefs and behaviors associated empirically with organizational resilience capacity. These can be assessed to support organizational understanding, direct evidence-based interventions, and provide a measure of accountability for impacting a latent, yet strategic, capability. The relationship between individual resilience capacity and organizational resilience capacity was also assessed, showing a small, but significant effect. That is, resilient individuals may contribute to vital conditions, but they do not create a resilient organization. </p>

This thesis explores the question of how social power is accounted for in the theory and practice of resilience. Beginning with a critical assessment of the social ecological systems (SES) perspective that underpins much of the theory and study of resilience, this thesis develops a framework, based on Gaventa’s powercube, for understanding power that also incorporates a much less hierarchical understanding of the dimensions of space and time. This revised ‘powerplane’ framework is applied to two empirical case studies of practices of resilience. Applying the powerplane to the case of government-led Scottish community emergency resilience planning finds that while the practices of resilience result in greater levels of engagement and interaction between local and regional levels of government, a gap exists between local government and the public it represents. Applying the powerplane to the grassroots case of Transition Town Peterborough, Canada, shows that intimate knowledge of local social and political institutions can allow a grassroots organisation to introduce resilience ideas into social and political community life. Together the two case studies reveal three key insights from resilience practices aimed at local contexts, rooted in: (1) institutionalising community engagement practices; (2) differences between formal and informal understandings of resilience; and (3) the scope of the risks resilience is aimed at mitigating. Critically exploring these issues in turn helps to illuminate questions about the efficacy, as well as the social and political implications of the resilience practice in question. For theory, the research shows that reconsidering hierarchical notions of scale and time in SES resilience can provoke new thinking about the role of power in resilience practices. In doing so, insights from this research offer novel challenges and complementarities to they way existing critiques of resilience approaches to account for social power issues.

In response to growing global impact on ecosystems, we design programs for conservation and restoration to maintain and enhance biodiversity, productivity and ecosystem resilience. To ensure the greatest return for these programs, there is an implicit requirement for identifying and understanding the complex non-linear relationships that can exist between impact gradients, ecosystem structure and the processes that mediate the two. Ecological resilience theory has developed as one of the fundamental explanations of this complexity. The application of ecological resilience theory in a local management context, however, is often hampered by a disparity between the theory and what is practical to test empirically. This thesis used seagrass ecosystems in Moreton Bay, Queensland as a model system for the development and testing of a practical framework to examine the potential for incorporating measures of feedback loops into the empirical assessment of resilience. I focussed on the behaviour of feedback processes in relation to changing levels of impact with a view to developing a generic, testable hypothesis that could be used to assess ecological resilience more broadly. A Bayesian network was used to synthesis the known relationships between impact and seagrass response to identify three key feedback processes that stabilise seagrass ecosystems in Moreton Bay......<br>Thesis (PhD Doctorate)<br>Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)<br>Griffith School of Environment<br>Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology<br>Full Text

As an interdependent global society enters an era of unprecedented change, resulting from unforeseen natural and social disasters and vulnerabilities, the resilience of global cities to survive is a pressing concern. This dissertation aims to elucidate the application of resilience thinking by showing how ecological resilience concepts can translate into urban systems, using the capital of South Africa, Tshwane, as the exploration ground. Resilience simultaneously embodies the capacity of urban systems to bounce back, adapt or transform. Translating these concepts into a holistic urban resilience approach answers three questions: a) What is resilience theory? b) What are the core concepts of ecological resilience theory? and c) How might these concepts translate to cities? The dissertation is structured in three parts; to establish the basis of resilience thinking, explore ecological resilience concepts in an urban system and lastly, assimilate findings into an urban resilience approach. Qualitative along with historical-comparative research methods, guided literature studies, and interdisciplinary research designs generated the finding that ecological resilience concepts translate well into the urban system, but that urban resilience is not a panacea for the ills of the urban environment. An urban resilience approach could comprise a) evolutionary or adaptive urban resilience involving an ongoing study and observation of the city system; and b) transformative urban resilience, that actively changes systems that reflect stronger or weaker resilience, so as to purposefully regenerate or collapse? them. This requires responsible and holistic conduct. Urban resilience thinking implies an appreciation for the complexity that underlies life, and modesty about ambitions for managing it.<br>Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2016.<br>tm2016<br>Architecture<br>PhD<br>Unrestricted

The focus of this thesis is to investigate resilience at an organisational level. The research aims to identify and establish the features of resilience within the response of an organisation to disruptive and crisis events. Natural disasters, pandemic disease, terrorist attacks, economic recession, equipment failure and human error can all pose both a potentially unpredictable and severe threat to the continuity of an organisation's operations. As a result, disruptive events highlight the need to develop robust and resilient organisational and infrastructural systems capable of adapting and overcoming complex disruptive events.

Children and young people in Public Care are one of the most at risk groups for educational failure and poor life outcomes (NCH, 2005). There is now a wealth of literature detailing predictive risk factors across a range of populations and outlining factors which contribute to resilient, adaptive outcomes in the face of risk factors (e.g. Rutter, 1990 Fonagy et al., 1994). In addition, an understanding of the processes and mechanisms involved is necessary in order to identify which, if any, of the many attributes and/or circumstances that correlate with resilience may be critical targets for effective prevention and intervention. Attributions, the causes given to events, are considered to be powerful determinants of our future actions (see Fosterling, 2001). Drawing on attribution theory and conceptualisations of optimism and self-efficacy, this research uses the Leeds Attributional Coding System (LACS) to compare high and low resilience looked after youngsters' perceptions of positive and negative events in educational, social and home contexts. Resilience was associated with how positive events were construed. High resilience (HR) youngsters made more positive attributions and tended to perceive the causes of positive outcomes optimistically, i.e. causes were relatively unchanging and wide reaching. Low resilience (LR) youngsters saw these causes as unstable and specific. HR adolescents tended to make self-efficacious controllable attributions for internal causes. LR young people were more negative about peer and carer/parent relationships, and views of school, suggesting that perceptions of more everyday contexts are more influential in resilience than major life events, such as changing school or placement, and that relationships are a key factor in positive adaptation. Furthermore, looked after adolescents tend to see themselves more frequently than non-looked after adolescents as the target of others actions. However, HR looked after youngsters are more likely to view others' actions positively.

<p> In the face of accelerating sea-level rise, people continue to live near and develop the coast. In the United States, we have chosen adaptation and protection, via coastal defenses, over retreat from the coast despite the unsustainable nature of efforts to rebuild our towns after storms. Coastal resilience has emerged as the dominant post-disaster narrative and has reinvigorated efforts to help our coasts recover from storms, but the application of theory-based principles of coastal resilience remains unclear. Here, I show that coastal resilience plans incorporate theory-based elements of coastal resilience significantly more than beach management plans. I reviewed over 3,000 pages in 22 planning documents and recorded use of 27 management techniques in five categories associated with coastal resilience. A Mann-Whiney U test found that resilience plans (n = 10) contained significantly more (p &lt; 0.05) techniques than beach management plans (n = 12) overall, but none of the differences in plan scores was significant when examined by category of technique. This research uncovers inadequacies of the current level of adaptation for sea-level rise, challenges the current process of coastal land use planning, and suggests improvements municipalities can implement to maximize impacts of coastal resilience planning such as developing holistic, diverse plans that include socioeconomic resilience and collaboration between practitioners and theorists.</p><p>