Carsten Felgentreff

Natural hazards and resilience: exploring institutional and organizational dimensions of social resilience

Policy discourses and academic debates provide evidence that resilience has become one of the leading ideas to deal with uncertainty and change in our times. This applies for numerous and diverse discourses such as flood risk management (Steinfuehrer et al. 2009), urban development policy (Linovski 2010; Mueller 2011), responding to terrorism (Coaffee et al. 2009), and mega-projects like the Olympic Games (Jennings and Lodge 2010), just to name a few. Resilience also appears in a diverse range of publications from institutional (Anderies et al. 2004), organizational (Weick 2009), and climate change adaptation research (Pelling 2011). While the need to build resilience is highlighted, the definitions of resilience are manifold and partially blurred. Given this diversity and accessing the more focused usage of the term ‘‘resilience’’ in ecological research, some authors worry about the health of resilience research (Klein et al. 2003; Brand and Jax 2007). Others see the growth and diversity of discourses and publications as a sign of ‘‘good’’ health (e.g., Van de Ven and Hargrave 2004, p. 291). Despite the wide range of diverse discourses and publications, this Special Issue of natural hazards aims to contribute to these debates with a specific perspective on the overall topic of resilience that might be best described with the term ‘‘social resilience.’’