The Promise and Pitfalls of Community Resilience
Published In: Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Commentary, v. 7, no. 6, Commentary, Dec. 2013, p. 603-606
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2013
Read More
Access further information on this document at Cambridge University PressThis article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
An important shift in terminology has occurred in emergency preparedness, and the concept of community resilience has become ubiquitous. Although enhancing community resilience is broader than preparedness, and emphasizes a distinct set of activities and participants, the terms are often used interchangeably. The implications of this shift have not been fully explored. This commentary describes the potential promise and pitfalls of the concept of community resilience and recommends strategies to overcome its limitations. We believe that resilience has the power to dramatically change this field in immense, positive ways, but some important challenges such as confusion about definitions and lack of accountability must first be overcome.
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
Research conducted by
This report is part of the RAND Corporation external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.