Fostering societal resilience and sustainability to disasters

Abstract

The term resilience is originally derived from the Latin word 'resilio' which means 'to jump back'. Nowadays, the term resilience is being adopted in many fields of research and for real life applications including disaster management. For researchers as well as the decision makers, the concept of resilience is to lead to a new way of attempting disaster and provide policy options. Furthermore, phrases such as sustainable and resilient communities, resilient livelihoods as well as building community resilient have gained wider popularity. Community resilience concept can best describe the adaptation of group of communities and societies to constant changing in their environmental, social, economic and political climates. The communities possessed unique coping mechanism to deal with internal and external stresses as well as disturbances and are able (to certain degree) to bounce back and regain control of their daily activities even after the disasters. The adoption of community resilience concept as mentioned by several authors has been widespread into disaster-related research as well as in emergency management studies. The purpose of this study is to critically review the concept of disaster resilient community which has now gained a wider recognition in disaster risk reduction (DRR) discourse particularly at international level. Local stakeholders together with local disaster managers, government agencies at federal, state and local levels and non-governmental agencies (NGOs), now enthusiastically embrace resilience concept as a desirable objective in formulating frameworks and strategies for reducing disaster risks. By drawing upon an extensive array of relevant secondary sources, this study intends to provide discussions and basic knowledge regarding the concept and application of resilient community to broader audience of DRR stakeholders and implementors.