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Features of resilience

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Abstract

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) definition of resilience is used here to organize common concepts and synthesize a set of key features of resilience that can be used across diverse application domains. The features in common include critical functions (services), thresholds, cross-scale (both space and time) interactions, and memory and adaptive management. We propose a framework for linking these features to the planning, absorbing, recovering, and adapting phases identified in the NAS definition. The proposed delineation of resilience can be important in understanding and communicating resilience concepts.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Aspen Global Change Institute for hosting the Risk and Resilience in the Face of Global Change workshop in December 2015 from which these ideas came together, specifically Susanne Moser, a co-chair. We appreciate funding for the workshop by NOAA and The Kresge Foundation. We would also like to acknowledge attendees of the aforementioned workshop, who as a group helped facilitate productive discussion that helped clarify these ideas. The Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is jointly supported by a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Geological Survey, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Wildlife Management Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA

    Elizabeth B. Connelly

  2. U.S. Geological Survey, Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA

    Craig R. Allen

  3. Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment, Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Kirk Hatfield

  4. Faculty of Psychology, Lisbon University, Lisbon, Portugal

    José M. Palma-Oliveira

  5. Department of Integrated Systems Engineering, The Ohio State University, 290 Baker Systems, 1971 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    David D. Woods

  6. Environmental Laboratory, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS, USA

    Igor Linkov

Authors
  1. Elizabeth B. Connelly
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  2. Craig R. Allen
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  3. Kirk Hatfield
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  4. José M. Palma-Oliveira
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  5. David D. Woods
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  6. Igor Linkov
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Correspondence to Igor Linkov.

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Connelly, E.B., Allen, C.R., Hatfield, K. et al. Features of resilience. Environ Syst Decis 37, 46–50 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-017-9634-9

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