Planning for Resilience

The Chapter points out the proposal of the book. Over the last decades, the society is becoming more interdependent and more complex, and consequently, more vulnerable to new threats and risks associated. In this scenario, the resilience thinking is gaining prominence in different fields as an attractive perspective for managing uncertainty. However, the application of resilience is hard to be operationalized. The book explores how resilience implies a challenge of flexibility and dynamism in the knowledge systems and learning processes. This chapter presents the structure, the key concepts and the contents of the book.

The chapter is an introduction to the challenging period we live in, characterised by the constant reminder of the unpredictability of catastrophic climate events, terroristic attacks, economic crisis, or mass failures of infrastructure systems. At the same time, we are witnessing our planet “shrinking” because of events that generate consequences that have global impacts (e.g. Chernobyl, global warming, 9/11 terrorist attacks, the financial crisis of 2008, etc.). The nature of contemporary risks is unprecedented in terms of their spatial, temporal and potential impact and the traditional categories to control and measure risks are no longer valid. In this context, there has been an evolution of the terms risk and disaster that has enhanced the interest of several academic disciplines; in particular, a new debate has challenged the social science tradition. To face hazards that escape the logic of control, the challenge is to find new ways of relating risks to decisions and practices. The different paragraphs explore how disasters have changed over the years, the evolution of the concept of control embodied in planning for risk in dealing with today’s challenges and the key issues of the concepts of vulnerability and risk. The last paragraph concludes the chapter by showing the implications of the world risk society introduced by Ulrich Beck.

The chapter aims to develop a conceptual framework for orienting the resilience-building challenges in planning. In a world in which the only certainty is uncertainty, resilience has become one of the most widely used concepts that has come to prominence in understanding and managing complex systems in the last decade (Welsh, Geogr J, 180:15–26, 2014). The concept of resilience was firstly formulated in ecology during the 1960s, but it has influenced many other research fields. With the advent of the social-ecological perspective, the resilience theory has also influenced political and human geography and environmental studies, with new explorations and paradigms (Davoudi et al, Plan Theory Pract 13:299–333, 2012). In particular, resilience has become a “pillar” of disaster management, climate adaptation, and regional economic development (Davoudi et al, Plan Pract Res, 28:307–322, 2013). However, the widespread use of resilience thinking has not brought any conceptual clarity but has instead contributed to the fuzzy character of the concept. The chapter firstly traces the conception of resilience and its three main currents: engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and socio-ecological resilience. Secondly, it presents how resilience can be linked with vulnerability, and finally it outlines the resilience interpretative approach to emergency management asserted in this work. The chapter also deals with the criticism to resilience in the literature, such as the unified positive meaning given to the concept and the devolution involving responsibility.

The chapter critically examines the contemporary structure of risk management by drawing on resilience perspective. Usually, disaster risk studies and emergency management are rooted in the PPRR chain (prevision, prevention, response and recovery) in which each step includes several actions, and competences are laid down by law. Its emphasis is on identifying exposure and vulnerability to risk and on bouncing back to normalcy. The result is a rigid process in which there is great attention given to the more predictable types of events and impacts, while less consideration is given to the interactions among actors across multiple scales and time frames. Network and cooperative relationships are taken for granted, even if they include a large number of actors with different skills. The central argument of the chapter is the key role that knowledge production, implementation and dissemination and the learning processes have in building resilience. The first part of the chapter analyses the multiple levels and sectors of interventions of the PPRR chain, illustrating the cross-scale challenges; while the second part problematises the integration of diverse disciplines knowledge and the role of collaborative knowledge production in a resilience approach.

This chapter unpacks the experience of the Italian region Umbria in facing seismic risk, according to the notion of resilience. This provides how resilience has been variously imagined, shaped and transformed in terms of discourses, values and actions in a practical experience. Umbria is one of the most seismic areas in the centre of the country. After the 1997 earthquake, the authorities started a long-term process, firstly, of re-thinking the response activities of civil protection, and, subsequently, of how the territory relates to a natural hazard in term of capacities of resilience. The reshape started with an organisational innovation aimed at improving the acquisition and transfer of knowledge. Over the years, it has caused the growth of social interaction of involved actors and has led to the reorganisation of governance structures and institutions accordingly to make them more responsive and relevant in the PPRR chain. The results are not limited to civil protection and the response phase, but also affect other sectors, in particular spatial planning. Finally, the call for resilience has also involved the community that, on one hand, wants to be more informed and, on the other, has become part of the response system.

The chapter summarises the various elements of the changing period we are live in, giving some reflections regarding how to deal with the increasing risks. In the current context characterised by uncertainty, complexity and interdependencies, the concept of resilience has come to prominence in understanding and managing complex systems and its success has enhanced the interest of several research fields. However, the popularity of resilience thinking has not brought any conceptual clarity and, especially, any operational paradigm. For policy makers and practitioners, it is often not clear how to translate into practice the notions of resilience thinking. This chapter identifies some key implications of resilience thinking for management of hazards.