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Tag: Resilience

3D Resilience

3D Resilience

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I recently discovered news aggregator Feedly. Having been released in 2008, I’m a little behind the curve!

For some time I’ve seen the inherent value of RSS feeds, but haven’t been able to figure out a way of making them work for me. However, Feedly (I’m not on commission, I’m sure other products are available!) seems to do just what I’ve been looking for. I have begun using Feedly to collate resilience blogs that I regularly check in on, and it’s really handy to have summaries available on the go without having to navigate to particular blogs.

Today Chris Bene’s article Making the Most of Resilience popped up in my feed, so I thought I’d check it out, and I’m glad I did.

Whilst primarily approaching resilience from a development angle, a diagram explaining resilience is applicable in an emergency management context.

3d resilience

Bene states that three types of capacity are important in living with change and uncertainty

  • absorptive capacity – the ability to cope with the effects of shocks and stresses
  • adaptive capacity – the ability of individuals or societies to adjust and adapt to shocks and stresses, but keep the overall system functioning in broadly the same way
  • transformative capacity – the ability to change the system fundamentally when the way it works is no longer viable

Im my experience, much of the work on resilience in a UK context is around developing the former, and it links back to an earlier post about developing a wider range of options for countering terrorism.

How can resilience professionals help to develop ‘softer’ approaches to preparing to emergencies which aren’t just about hardening, strengthening and fallback systems. How can we better embrace opotunities to transform both communities and places? I imagine that developing resilience is more likley to be sucessful where interventions reflect the three dimensions on the continuum.

What’s in a name?

What’s in a name?

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Don’t worry, my knowledge of Shakespeare runs to just two quotes (both from Romeo and Juliet). David Alexander posted recently about the origins of the word ‘Resilience’, however, today I caught a blog post from Durham IHRR and it got me to thinking…does it matter what we call what we do?

In the office we often have conversations about what ‘Resilience’ means. I think we’ve finalled settled on a definition, based on the UK Civil Protection Lexicon, which includes the ability to detect, prevent, handle and recover from disruptive challenges. Whether this is my preferred definition or not isn’t so important (I’d actually have prefered something more reflective of the Latin eymological root of the word resilire “to rebound, recoil”).

I found the Google Ngram graph for ‘resilience’ interesting, although the scale of the graph probably runs the risk of us reading too much into the patterns. The period of growth since the 1960’s is particularly interesting and probably reflects the term being used by a wider range of fields (ecology, psychology, climate science etc).

Resilience 1800-2008 Google Ngram

Time Magaine called it the buzzword of 2013, so I took to Google Trends to see if there were any more recent pattens. Whilst there is a definate upward trend, to me it’s still inconclusive.

But the actual issue here, is does it matter? Call it resilience, call it Emergency Planning, call it Disaster Management, and the rose still smells the same, even if it doesn’t smell sweet.

I’ve always found definitions restrictive. Perhaps embracing the malleability and imprecision of the definitions could be a good thing? After all, in the event of an emergency/disaster/crisis/catastrophe/act of god, do we, as individuals or communities really care about definitions?

Debunking the Bunker

Debunking the Bunker

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London Bunker. Source: Wikipedia

I remember as a child, my grandmother telling me tales of the Second World War. There was probably a dash of artistic license, but somehow she managed to turn gruesome scenes into Enid Blyton style adventures; many of which took place in or around her family’s Anderson Shelter. During the war, going underground was effective for both the public and government, with much of the UK war effort coordinated from ‘secret’ bunkers beneath Whitehall.

Why did wartime bunkers work? They provided a degree of risk mitigation from falling bombs, however that is a much lower risk today (thankfully) and therefore we need to ensure that our arrangements keep pace with contemporary risk.

The key to building resilience is to get out of the bunker (at least figuratively), to engage the public through sharing information on risks they face and actions they can take to prevent, prepare and recover.

From land use planning and architecture, to the design of staff and supplier contracts, investment in diversity of communication technologies and recognition of the importance of business continuity, I think we’re beginning to see a similar shift in emergency preparedness. It’s a slow process, but I hope that eventually resilience becomes as habitual as brushing your teeth, wearing seat belts or recycling waste. 

Note: this post was originally published in Dec 2012 but was updated in Sept 2021 after I discovered some of the links were redirecting to gambling websites. I’m not sure how long those link errors were present and apologies if you have been taken to inappropriate content by mistake.

Doomsday Preppers

Doomsday Preppers

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I’m not sure if you’ve seen this show which airs on National Geographic? I hadn’t until ‘Doomsday Preppers’ were mentioned in episode 08.17 of Grey’s Anatomy.

The show opens to dramatic music and rolling clouds…

“Ordinary Americans from all walks of life are taking whatever measures necessary to prepare [cut to a relatively normal looking man preparing for the total destruction of the power grid, a guy in breathing apparatus concerned about the Yellowstone super volcano and finally a lady who appears to think a plate of rice will avert financial collapse (?!)] and protect themselves from what they perceive is the fast-approaching end of the world as we know it” It’s impressive if slightly scare-mongering stuff.

But behind all the drama, and underneath the mildly mocking voiceover, is a sound message about preparing for emergencies, not just as individuals, but there is a strong emphasis on community preparedness – something that, as an Emergency Planner (more on that later), really resonates with me.

I don’t mind that my housemates mock my ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ bag (which I’ve had in various guises for 4 years now). According to the quiz on the Doomsday Preppers website, my bag would last me 2 weeks max. I’ve seen the contents of the bag, and honestly think that’s a little optimistic!

But I’m not trying to survive for 60 months, my intention, based on my appreciation of the risks that I face, is to cope for 24 hours, or get to a place of safety. There’s loads of checklists out there on what should be in your bag, but to me it’s a bit more personal than that. There would be no point in me including water purification tablets, I haven’t got the first clue about how to use them; but more than that, I can’t conceive of the situation in which I won’t have access to water (maybe that’s my own naivety?!).

Risk perception is highly subjective, and an introductory post probably isn’t the place for my thoughts on the heuristics involved, but it’s an interesting area which receives less consideration than I think it deserves, and is something that I intend to come back to.

My hope for this blog: to share my views on emergency planning and resilience, without the ‘accessibility’ trappings of my professional role; that said – the opinions here are mine and mine only, it does not reflect the views of the organisation I work for, or the organisations I work with (that’s the “boring but necessary” disclaimer out of the way!).

Now, excuse me whilst I go ready my supplies for December 21st…

Picture credit: National Geographic