By Jock Gammon
What does resilience look like? In a piece entitled An integrative review of the built environment discipline’s role in the development of society’s resilience to disasters published in the International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, researchers described ecological resilience as the ‘the amount of disturbance an ecosystem can withstand without changing self-organised processes and structures.’
The Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities describes resilience as being ‘prepared but also dynamic, flexible and quick to respond.’
So rather than manufacturing a ‘replacement method’ of resilience where damaged parts are substituted for new, wouldn’t it be better if critical infrastructure and buildings were designed to withstand more in the first place? What if this resilient design could absorb some of the impact of natural disasters and offset it, lessening the destruction caused and making ‘bouncing back’ easier to do?
When it comes to storms, floods and severe heat waves, living infrastructure is a sustainable way to build pre-disaster resilience into business as usual.