DEFINING RESILIENCE: A PREREQUISITE FOR EFFECTIVE FLOOD MANAGEMENT

A. Cartwright (CIWEM & Tonkin + Taylor)

ABSTRACT

In the realm of flood management, the pursuit of resilience remains elusive, hindered by a fundamental challenge: the absence of a shared understanding of what resilience entails and the benchmarks we aspire to achieve. Past flooding incidents in New Zealand and overseas serve as stark reminders of the repercussions of navigating preparedness, response, and recovery without a clear definition of resilience. Our cautionary tale is beginning to write itself.

This paper will explore differing definitions to seek alignment, including Treasury’s discussion that “the concept of resilience is wider than natural disasters and covers the capacity of public, private and civic sectors to withstand disruption, absorb disturbance, act effectively in a crisis, adapt to changing conditions, including climate change, and grow over time”.

Judith Rodin's influential work focuses on the triple nature of resilience—asset management with its associated risk frameworks, psychological resilience, and systems thinking—each integral to comprehending the multifaceted landscape of resilience within the flood context.

At its core, resilience transcends mere asset protection; it embodies a symbiotic relationship between infrastructure resilience and human adaptability. Rodin's framework underscores the imperative of integrating asset management principles, risk management frameworks such as ISO 31000, with a profound understanding of human resilience—the ability to cope and recover from stressors inherent in natural hazard events. Lessons from the Christchurch earthquakes showed the importance of building social capital from grassroots, a fundamental factor for resilience.

Moreover, in a world governed by complex systems and associated interdependencies, the significance of systems thinking cannot be overstated. Flood management operates within a dynamic ecosystem of interconnected variables, necessitating a paradigm shift towards holistic, systems-based approaches to resilience-building. This paper explores how our definition of resilience must be flexible enough to stay relevant in an increasingly complex world, whilst staying pragmatic to be effectively applied in everyday use.

Indicators and metrics are paramount for understanding the efficacy of our strategies. However can resilience be measured, and how do we differentiate risk from resilience? Following defining resilience, these will be the focal questions for this paper.

Simply put, high resilience communities can be described as those where impacts are not felt as deeply, and recover rapidly to be stronger post-event, providing metrics such as depth of impact (absorption) and speed of recovery (adaptability). Beyond these, infrastructure metrics include robustness and redundancy. Exploring how these can be measured is critical to helping monitor and tailor resilience interventions accordingly.

As we navigate the complexities of defining resilience within the stormwater and flood sector, it becomes evident that resilience is not a static endpoint but a perpetual journey—a moving goalpost that adapts to evolving challenges and aspirations.

Ultimately, this paper advocates for a collective re-evaluation of our approach to resilience within flood management, emphasizing the need for a shared vocabulary and framework. By embracing a nuanced understanding of resilience—one rooted in systems thinking and human adaptability—we can embark on a transformative journey towards a more resilient future, where storms will continue to disrupt, yet communities recover stronger.