Resilience in flood risk management – Exploring its added value for science and practice

¹ Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER)
² Chair of Environmental Development and Risk Management, Technische Universität Dresden

^a Corresponding author: j.schanze@ioer.de

Abstract

The concept of resilience has become more prominent in the disaster risk sciences and policy documents on disaster risk reduction such as the United Nations Sendai Framework of Action 2015-2030. Originating from physics, psychology and ecology, it currently gains interest in a number of other fields. In line with that, it has been adopted in flood risk management from different disciplinary perspectives. Therefore, the question about the meaning of the resilience concept for flood risk management occurs. The paper derives a core concept of resilience for flood risk management from an extensive literature review. Hereby, it reflects the scope and characteristics of elements and (sub-)systems relevant to governing flood risks. It then integrates this concept in a comprehensive framework of risk management and differentiates it from similar concepts such as resistance, adaptability and transformability. Thereafter, the core concept is related to disciplinary views on resilience and particularly their operationalisation. The focus is on two examples of building constructions and risk management strategies. Interdependencies between application of resilience in these examples are discussed as well as similarities and distinctions of the disciplinary views are indicated. This leads to conclusions on the added value of the resilience concept for science and practice of flood risk management and to identification of questions for future research and implementation.