1. A Brief History of
RESILIENCE
David Alexander
University College London

2. There's
a unique
London
flavour to
resilience:
I will
explain
why....

3. Caveat emptor: this is a story
of dead white males, not of
women or ethnic diversity.
Much as I would like to,
I can't rewrite history.

4. RESILIENCE: the ability
to overcome the impacts
of large, negative events
[by a combination of
resistance and adaptation].
Not the only definition,
not exclusive,
not comprehensive,
and not incontestable.

5. Hypothesis: by
examining the
history of the
resilience concept,
we can understand
better its
meanings in the
context of
contemporary
science.
A recent
publication listed
28 definitions
of resilience.

6. "Originally developed as an ecological
concept, resilience is being applied to
coupled human-environment systems."
(Berkes 2007, p. 286)
"The study of resilience traces
its roots back a scant 50 years."
(Goldstein and Brooks 2006, p. 3)
"The concept of resilience was originally
developed in the field of ecology."
(Djalate et al. 2011, p. 3)

7. Marcus Tullius Cicero
Cicero
106 - 43 BC
Orationes
resilio, resilire - to rebound

8. Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Seneca the Elder
54 BC - AD 39
Controversiae
resilio, resilire - leap, to leap
...quanto minus quam in templum resiliuit?

9. Publius Ovidius Naso
Ovid
43 BC – AD 17/18
Metamorphoses
resilio, resilire - to shrink, contract

10. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
Quintilian
AD 35 - 100
Institutio Oratoria
resilio, resilire - to avoid

11. Gaius Plinius Secundus
Pliny the Elder
AD 23 –79
Naturalis Historia
resilio, resilire - leaping frogs and fleas

12. St Jerome
347-420
St John Chrysostom
347-407
Sagitta in lapidem numquam figitur,
interdum resiliens percutit dirigentem.
"An arrow never lodges in a stone:
often it recoils upon its sender."

13. Reslience: a concept on the move
résiler
Unverwüstlichkeit
resile

14. Henry VIII
1491-1547
Anne Boleyn
1485-1536
"if the Quene wold herafter resile and goo back"
Stephen Gardiner (1483-1555), writing
at Woodstock on 1 September 1529
to Thomas Wolsey (1473-1530).

15. Resilience
English science
rises to the
challenge.

16. The "cradle"
of resilience:
Canonbury Tower
London N1.
Built in 1509
to survive the
Universal Deluge:
inhabited in 1625
by Francis Bacon.

17. 3.9 km

18. Francis Bacon
1561-1626

19. Francis Bacon
Sylva Sylvarum, 1625
[Are we to criticise him for using
the "greengrocer's apostrophe"?]

20. John Amos Comenius
1592-1670
Lumen divinum reformatae synopsis
"Natural Philosophy Reformed by
Divine Light" (Leipzig, 1633, tr. 1651)
Resiliency

21. Thomas Blount 1619-79
Glossographia, 1661
"A Dictionary of the Hard
Words of Whatsoever Language"
First dictionary definition

22. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Hymn to Earth
in Friendship's Offering
1834

23. William J.M. Rankine
1858-67
Manual of Applied Mechanics

24. William J.M. Rankine, 1858-67
A Manual of Applied Mechanics

25. Commodore Matthew
Calbraith Perry, 1857

26. Perry noted the resilience of the Japanese
after the Ansei Great Earthquakes, 1854-5

27. Norman Garmezy
1918-2009
Psychologist

28. Ludwig Von Bertalanffy
1901-72
General
Systems
Theory

29. Prof. Crawford
Stanley ('Buzz')
Holling
[b. 1930],
Canadian
systems
ecologist,
University
of Florida

30. Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics 4 (1973)

31. "But there is another property,
termed resilience, that is a measure
of the persistence of systems and
of their ability to absorb change
and disturbance and still maintain
the same relationships between
populations or state variables."
(Holling 1973, p.14)

32. • analysis of the stability
of ecological assemblages
• ideal for island ecology and
other well-defined systems
• in line with GST resilience
is an equilibrium tendency
• promotes a narrow view
of the resilience concept
• Holling's approach has been
widely used uncritically.
Holling's use of the resilience concept

33. "Resilience is a systems concept*, and
the social-ecological system, as an
integrated and interdependent unit,
may itself be considered a complex
adaptive system."
(Berkes and Ross 2013, p. 14)
*not necessarily!

34. Causes of disaster
natural geophysical,
technological, social
History
single and
cumulative
impact
of past
disasters
Human
cultures
constraints
and
opportunities
IMPACTS
Adaptation
to risk
RESILIENCE

35. Neil Adger
University of East Anglia
Progress in Human
Geography, 2000

36. Urie Bronfenbrenner
1917-2005

37. Society
Culture
Politics
Economy
Welfare
Hospitals
Church
Media
Community-
based
services
Family
Community
Workplace
individual
Bronfenbrenner's community resilience theory
Microsystem
MesosystemMacrosystem
Chronosystem
Exosystem

38. LAW
STATESMANSHIP
LITERATURE
SCIENTIFIC
METHOD
MECHANICS
MANU-
FACTURING
ECOLOGY
MANAGEMENT
(ADAPTIVE)
CHILD
PSYCHOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
SOCIAL
RESEARCH
DISASTER RISK
REDUCTION
SUSTAINABILITY
SCIENCE CLIMATE CHANGE
ADAPTATION
c. BC 50
AD 1529
1625
1859
1930
1950
1973
2000
2010
NATURAL
HISTORY

39. RESILIENCE
Social
Technical
Physical
Psychological
CLIMATE CHANGE
ADAPTATION
DISASTER RISK
REDUCTION
OTHER HAZARDS
AND RISKS
natural
social
technological
intentional
compound
cascading
SUSTAINABILITY
SCIENCE

40. Organisational
systems:
management
Social
systems:
behaviour
Natural
systems:
function
Technical
systems:
malfunction
VulnerabilityHazard
Resilience
Political
systems:
decisions

41. physical
environmental
social
economic
health-related
cultural
educational
infrastructural
institutional
RESILIENCE
COPING
VULNERABILITY
FRAGILITY
SUSCEPTIBILITY
Organisation:
• public admin.
• private sector
• civil society
Community
Individual
Resilience: facets...
...and relationships

42. • an objective, a process or a strategy?
• a paradigm, diverse paradigms?
• 'bounce-back' or 'bounce-forward'?
• focuses on the community scale
• can reconcile dynamic & static elements.
Resilience

43. RESILIENCE:
as a material has brittle
strength and ductility:
society must have an optimum
combination of resistance to
hazard impacts and ability
to adapt to them.

44. Society
Culture
Politics
Economy
Welfare
Hospitals
Church
Media
Community-
based
services
Family
Community
Workplace
individual
Bronfenbrenner's community resilience theory
Microsystem
MesosystemMacrosystem
Chronosystem
Exosystem

45. Resilient
culture
Culture of
resilience

46. INSTRUMENTS OF
DISSEMINATION
• mass media
• targeted campaign
• social networks
• internet
Augmentation
MASS
EDUCATION
PROGRAMME
HUMAN
CAPITAL
HABIT
CULTURE
The creation of a culture of civil protection

47. Broader
scope and
outcomes
Changing
objectives
of emergency
management
Civil Protection
Disaster
Management
Resilience
Civil Contingencies Management
Disaster Risk Reduction

48. Natural Hazards and Earth System
Sciences 13(1): 2707-2716 [2013]
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