UC Berkeley

The concept of resilience has become a part of the larger discourse not only for the engineering professions involved in the design of buildings and infrastructure, but also for disaster researchers in many academic fields as well as policymakers in governments at the local and national levels. The concept has evolved significantly over the past 10–20 years. In the early 2000s, the engineering community was coming to grips with the two paradigms of resilience: (1) a more technical approach to design that focused on predictability and stability in a steady state; and (2) a broader definition originating in systems theory and ecology that focused on the ability to reorganize while undergoing change. The concept of resilience continues to be redefined, in part because of the human and community impacts highlighted by the COVID pandemic, and natural and climate-induced disasters. Recent experience suggests that there are gaps in the narrower technical/engineering framing of resilience as well as in the overarching considerations of building resilience into our social and physical infrastructure. This article briefly reviews the relationship between engineering and societal efforts in promoting resilience, discusses changes in how different research fields and policymakers think about resilience, and offers an outlook for future planning. It discusses successes and failures from multiple disaster recovery efforts, and evaluates policies and programs designed to improve resilience as an ex-ante recovery measure. The article also includes lessons learned from the pandemic, and from evolving polices addressing climate change. It provides examples from relatively successful resilience programs, as well as opportunities for new approaches to resilience through changes in professional and technical education to improve integration of resilience across multiple fields. It also suggests investments in policies and multi-benefit programs to improve public- and private-sector capacity and therefore resilience before disasters strike.