Understanding Disaster Risk: A Multidimensional Approach

By Ksenia Chmutina

Understanding Disaster Risk: A Multidimensional Approach presents the first principle from the UNISDR Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015-2030. The framework includes a discussion of risk and resilience from both a theoretical and governance perspective in light of ideas that are shaping our common future. In addition, it presents innovative tools and best practices in reducing risk and building resilience. Combining the applications of social, financial, technological, design, engineering and nature-based approaches, the volume addresses rising global priorities and focuses on strengthening the global understanding of vulnerability, displaced communities, cultural heritages and cultural identity.

Readers will gain a multifaceted understanding of disaster, addressing both historic and contemporary issues. Focusing on the various dimensions of disaster risk, the book details natural and social components of risk and the challenges posed to risk assessment models under the climate change paradigm.

• Addresses the current challenges in policy and practice for building resilience strategies
• Follows the global frameworks for disaster risk reduction and sustainability, specifically the UNISDR Sendai Framework for DRR, 2015-2030
• Aids in understanding the natural and social components of risk in a diverse and globalized world
• Presents the challenges posed to risk assessment models under the climate change paradigm

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780128190487

Book preview

Brazil

Preface

Over the past 40 years, there has been a significant increase in the number of people affected by disasters globally. According to the Red Cross, an average of 354 disasters occurred throughout the world from 1991 to 1999, but the annual figure keeps increasing. In 2018 315 disasters led to 11,804 deaths, over 68 million people affected, and US$131.7 billion in economic losses around the world. The burden has not been shared equally: Asia suffered the highest impact, accounting for 45% of disaster events, 80% of deaths, and 76% of people affected (CRED, 2019). And the burden falls primarily upon those most impacted by systemic inequalities and injustices in society—often referred to as the vulnerable.

Reducing disaster risk—and implicitly human vulnerability—is foundational to any semblance of sustainable development. Post-2015, if we are to aspire to the targets of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), we must first have a clear understanding of the differential and discriminatory impacts of disasters—and how risk is being created through status quo development in the first place. Understanding the processes that turn hazards into disasters leading to loss and damage is an initial step. In light of climate change and potential for modification of extreme weather events, this is critical.

For a long time a vision that valued the understanding of natural processes and technocratic approach to taming these processes prevailed; disasters have been widely called natural and framed as being caused by nature. One significant implication of this is that if nature caused the loss of life and property, no person is to blame. This allows a discussion of disasters removed from social and political critique, which some may revel in. However, there has been a gradual—and welcomed—shift that emphasizes that disaster risk emerges from society itself. We (humans) create risk. Disasters are a product of economic, social, cultural, and political processes, and while a hazard cannot be prevented, disasters can be (Chmutina and von Meding, 2019; Chmutina et al., 2019).

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) reinforces this argument by proposing four global targets that would contribute toward the reduction in mortality, number of affected people, direct economic loss in relation to GDP, and damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services (UNDRR, 2015). There are also three targets contributing toward the increase in the number of countries with national and local DRR strategies, international cooperation between developed and developing countries, and the availability of multihazard early warning systems—to be achieved by 2030. The SFDRR asserts that effectiveness in disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies requires an understanding of risk scenarios—on the hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and capacity dimensions—to adequately allow for informed decision-making. The focus is not only on postdisaster actions but also, and more importantly, on leveraging the actions in predisaster risk assessments, for prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and effective response to disasters. This is only possible when acknowledging that disaster risk reduction is everyone’s business (Raju and Costa, 2018). National DRR strategies, whether or not consciously developed under a risk governance perspective (Aven and Renn, 2010), face the risk of assessing resilience simply as one more metric, adding to probabilistic studies on hazard and loss estimation. An approach that understands building resilience as a process provides more valuable insights in understanding and reducing disaster risk (Chmutina and von Meding, 2020).

Sequentially the first one is the knowledge they directly bring to the risk and concerns’ assessment, crucial for the finding of the technical and nontechnical solutions and, more importantly, for the judgment and political commitment with disaster risk reduction, to be expressed in the risk management instruments. Assessments that improve our knowledge about disaster risk are directly connected to the relevance with which society, as a whole, faces this collective challenge. The effectiveness of risk planning, prevention, mitigation strategies, and emergency responses depends on that valuing, judgment, and commitment. The second practical utility is related to monitoring and accountability of disaster risk reduction strategies, so often intangible and hard to measure. Both qualitative and quantitative methods need to be applied to provide decision-makers with the most pertinent and conclusive indicators. It is however important to bear in mind who is measuring what and why. It is critical that decision-makers challenge the normative approaches to disaster risk reduction and instead come up with the solutions that address the root causes and underlying issues that create vulnerability—and thus lead to disasters—in the first place.

This book Understanding Disaster Risk: A multidimensional Approach features 16 chapters authored by a mix of academic researchers and practitioners and comprises insights from cases around the world that address the first of the SFDRR’s priorities—understanding disaster risk. The research presented here reflects the diversity of issues addressed by SFDRR Priority One: Understanding Disaster Risk. The chapters explore both the policy and the practice of risk assessment and management, ranging from the national to the street block and individual level. The chapters present innovative tools and theoretical frameworks that address the multidimensional character of disaster risk and contribute to its understanding and mitigation.

There are several prominent themes in the book. Many authors grapple with challenging concepts of resilience and vulnerability and their role in building back better. Various approaches to vulnerability assessments comprise a significant part. Giampieri provides a comprehensive review of flood vulnerability indices in coastal cities. Innes and colleagues develop a comprehensive social vulnerability index to drought based on field-collected data. Guerra and Zucherato develop a local level vulnerability index in Brazil. Santos and colleagues correlate social vulnerability data with a flood susceptibility index. Finally, Espinoza-Valenzuela and Hurtado explore the cultural, institutional, and social roots of vulnerability to forest fires in Rapa Nui, Eastern Island, in support of a new risk governance paradigm.

Resilience and its role in Priority One are also addressed with different perspectives, scales, and methodologies. De Wit and colleagues present a thorough reflection on the uncertainty and complexity that transformative resilience faces, based on local participatory processes, systemic design, and literature review. Hanzl and colleagues develop the concept of urban resilience under the perspectives of urban metabolism and circular economy, through the optimization of land consumption. At the city scale, McClymont and colleagues make use of the abstraction hierarchy approach to capture the sociotechnical interactions between the tangible and intangible aspects that influence the capacity to absorb and recover from hazards’ negative effects. Petridou and colleagues take the case of the Swedish municipal context and identify the gaps in integrating the resilience-related policies along with the sustainability-related ones. Posh and colleagues apply the agency toward resilience model in Nepal, a context in which the constraints posed by the structural conditions and the access to assets can be overcome by considering the individuals’ goals and trade-offs.

Throughout the book, various hazards are explored; however, there is a particular—and timely—focus on wild and forest fires. Depietri and Orenstein focus on the cultural forcers related to the wildland-urban interface, while Gonzalez-Mathiesen and March address the same fire context but in regard to informal settlements. Both contribute to the design and planning of mitigation strategies and local-capacity strengthening. Finally, making use of a diverse set of knowledge sources, Nogueira de Moraes and March conduct a combined analysis of social and natural systems, aiming at the improvement of emergency management services and the resilience of local communities.

The interaction between the individual and collective actions is also an important part of building back better. Giardina and Fullwood-Thomas apply Oxfam’s approach in acquiring vulnerability and resilience-related knowledge and how it is used in providing adaptive interventions that improve people’s capacities. Garcia-Tapia and Ramirez-Marquez bring the dimension of social media in linking the virtual communities they foster, with root-based disaster relief initiatives. Finally, Albert, Amaratunga, and Haigh study the threats posed by the impact of oil spills to the livelihood alternatives in the Niger Delta and how this process affects individuals’ resilience.

This concept of resilience is prominent in all the contributions included in this book. Resilience is a frequently misused concept, but nevertheless, it plays a fundamental role in understanding disaster risk. Resilience has a multitude of meanings for the different stakeholders, academics, and decision-makers involved in DRR (Wang et al., 2020; Chmutina et al., 2016; Reghezza-Zitt et al., 2012; Levine, 2014; Alexander, 2013). It moved from being an explanation of how people act and cope with hazards, risks, and disasters to become a normative approached that is being implemented and measured. As the concept of resilience is becoming more and more malleable, some argue that it faces the risk of becoming less useful in understanding the causes and drivers of disasters. Others however believe that it is through this malleability that resilience is able to act a boundary object that provides common ground for discussions. Additionally—assuming that it is possible to effectively measure resilience—there is still the theoretical challenge of deciding what should be measured and by whom. Quite often the metrics that are sought are the ones quantifying the capacity of communities to protect themselves against nature, which largely reduces the value of the concept and is counterproductive in reaching the roots of disasters. Other discussions revolve around community and individual resilience: does labeling someone resilient means that they do not need support? These and other discussions are important—however, it is thus important to remind ourselves of three underlying questions: resilience of what, resilience to what, and resilience by who? (Carpenter et al., 2001). It is only by considering these questions that we are able to unpack resilience contextually.

Five years into the 2015–2030 Sendai Framework period, this book helps us to reflect on the successes that have been achieved in relation to the Priority One—and on challenges that are yet to be tackled if we are to mainstream the idea of disaster risk governance in the next decade. Understanding disaster risk is multifaceted: it requires understanding of hazards, exposure, vulnerability, resilience, and capacities—and most importantly the actions (or the lack of such) that create the root causes of risk and vulnerability in the first place. As we are writing this editorial, COVID-19 pandemic is spreading around the world, once again highlighting that disasters are not natural and that resilience cannot be built on inequality and marginalization. Achieving the SFDRR goals is only possible if we act together in tackling the underlying social issues; as technocratic top-down approaches are failing, it is time to embrace successes and failure and learn from each other that resilience is not a sliver bullet.

References

Alexander D.E. Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological journey. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 2013;13(11):2707–2716. doi:10.5194/nhess-13-2707-2013.

Aven Terje, Renn Ortwin. Risk Management and Governance: Concepts, Guidelines and Applications. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag; 2010.

Carpenter S., et al. From metaphor to measurement: resilience of what to what?. Ecosystems. 2001;4(8):765–781. doi:10.1007/s10021-001-0045-9.

Chmutina K., von Meding J. A dilemma of language: ‘natural disasters’ in academic literature. Int. J. Disaster Risk Sci. 2019;10:283–292. doi:10.1007/s13753-019-00232-2.

Chmutina K., Lizarralde G., Dainty A., Bosher L. Unpacking resilience policy discourse. Cities. 2016;58:70–79. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2016.05.017.

Chmutina K., von Meding J., Bosher L. Language matters: dangers of the natural disaster misnomer. Contributing paper to the Global Assessment Report (GAR) 2019. UNDRR; 2019. Available at: https://www.preventionweb.net/publications/view/65974.

CRED. Natural Disasters 2018. Brussels: CRED; 2019. Available at: https://emdat.be/sites/default/files/adsr_2018.pdf.

Levine S. Assessing resilience: why quantification misses the point, HPG Working Paper. London. Available at: http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9049.pdf. 2014.

Raju E., Costa K. Governance in the Sendai: a way ahead?. Disaster Prevent. Manage. 2018;27(3):278–291. doi:10.1108/DPM-08-2017-0190.

Reghezza-Zitt M., et al. What resilience is not: uses and abuses. Cybergeo: Eur. J. Geogr. 2012;doi:10.4000/cybergo.25554.

UNDRR. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. Sendai: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction; 2015. Available at: https://www.undrr.org/publication/sendai-framework-disaster-risk-reduction-2015-2030.

Wang Y., et al. Conceiving resilience: Lexical shifts and proximal meanings in the human-centered natural and built environment literature from 1990 to 2018. Dev. Built Environ. 2020;1:100003. doi:10.1016/j.dibe.2019.100003.

Further reading

Chmutina, K., von Meding, J., 2020. Resilience. DisasterDecon’s podcast episode recorded on Feb 24th 2020. Avaliable at: https://disastersdecon.podbean.com/e/s2e8-resilience-audience-special/.

Chapter 0.1: Resilience in the Anthropocene

Fronika de Wita; Astrid Catharina Mangnusb; Carolina Giraldo Nohrac    a Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

b Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

c Department Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

Abstract

The Anthropocene emphasizes an epoch of increased human impact on our planet. It is filled with uncertainty and complexity and asks for a transformative and interdisciplinary response. The objective of this study is to bridge the gap between disciplines working on resilience and draw lessons for improved governance of vulnerable communities. We use a systematic literature review to examine how the Anthropocene and resilience are conceptualized in the fields of human geography, futures studies, and systemic design. In human geography, the focus is on increasing cultural understanding and exploring how explanations coexist in complex ways within and across cultures. The futures field uses the concept as an opportunity to push for sustainability transformations, by inviting communities to futures workshops where they can develop scenarios rooted in their own practices. The field of systemic design emphasizes the need for systemic solutions to build new relations among territorial entities, visualize hidden potentialities, and boost proactive collaboration among local actors. These disciplinary insights show that, although they all hold different perspectives, combining them brings insightful lessons for resilience thinking. We conclude that the Anthropocene needs transformative resilience that combines knowledge from different scientific disciplines with local knowledge and experiences, in a transdisciplinary way.

Keywords

Anthropocene; Adaptive capacity; Transdisciplinarity; Multilevel governance; Resilience

Chapter outline

0.1.1Introduction

0.1.2Methodology

0.1.3Results

0.1.3.1Insights from human geography

0.1.3.2Insights from systemic design

0.1.3.3Insights from futures studies

0.1.4Discussion

0.1.5Final considerations

References

0.1.1: Introduction

High anthropogenic pressures on the earth system are exceeding the planetary boundaries on various scales. We are hitting the planetary ceiling: research shows that if humanity continues living the way it is doing, human well-being is at risk (Rockstrom, 2009) and irreversible changes to the earth system are impending (Lenton et al., 2008; Schellnhuber, 2009). The Great Acceleration has led us to a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000), in which humans are the dominating force that hold the future in their hands.

The main complicating factors to living in the Anthropocene are that all of its issues are interconnected and that there is a high level of uncertainty, which demands planetary stewardship: an alteration of the relationship between people and planet (Steffen et al., 2011). With the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the UN in 2015, we have a universal plan for people and planet—a roadmap for planetary stewardship. However, in order to achieve the SDGs and become planetary stewards, we need a completely new way of thinking that fits the turbulent context of the Anthropocene. Current governance approaches are failing to promote resilience, because of their disciplinary and top-down approach, in which the decision makers are not aware of the complexity of systems and do not take stakeholders’ views into account. Folke (2016), father of modern resilience thinking, highlights that being resilient means having strategies and policies in place to deal with the unknown, which is a promising answer to the Anthropocene’s main complicating factors.

Resilience thinking emerged in the 1970s from two different traditions: child psychology and ecosystem ecology. It developed into research streams like community resilience, climate resilience, disaster resilience, and development resilience. Folke et al. (2010) and Folke (2016) describe three forms of resilience: (1) Persistence, or bouncing back, which includes continual change and adaptation, but remaining on the same pathways; (2) Adaptability, which is about innovation and change, but also remaining on the same pathways; and (3) Transformability, which is about shifting pathways. Where disaster resilience was more about bouncing back and climate resilience was about adapting to change, the new resilience thinking is about transformation: a reconfiguration of systems, values, and beliefs.

An important component of resilience thinking is the features and dynamics of complex systems. Research (Simonsen et al., 2014; Biggs et al., 2015) has provided seven building blocks for applying resilience thinking in order to increase the capacity to deal with unexpected change in complex social-ecological systems. These building blocks are: (1) maintaining diversity and redundancy; (2) managing connectivity; (3) managing slow variables and feedback; (4) treating social-ecological systems as complex systems; (5) encouraging learning; (6) broadening participation; and (7) polycentric governance systems.

This chapter looks at the potential of resilience thinking for addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene by outlining and synthesizing lessons learned in three different academic disciplines: human geography, futures studies, and design studies. How can we combine the insights of these different disciplines and rethink the concept of resilience outside of the disciplinary box? By looking at resilience thinking as a dynamic concept, we bring a transdisciplinary and holistic approach for resilience in the Anthropocene and show how this can be applied in practice to decision-making processes. The next section of the chapter outlines the methodology for the multidisciplinary literature review. The third section gives an overview of the results for each of the three disciplines. The fourth section discusses these findings and their relevance for the challenges of the Anthropocene, after which the chapter closes with a conclusion.

0.1.2: Methodology

When discussing a methodology for research that connects the knowledge contained in multiple disciplines, it is of importance to distinguish between three approaches to research: (1) multidisciplinary research; (2) interdisciplinary research; and (3) transdisciplinary research. According to Ramadier (2004), both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research are still based on disciplinary thinking. However, where multidisciplinary research is based on the juxtaposition of different disciplines, interdisciplinary research constructs a common model for the disciplines involved. Transdisciplinary research, on the other hand, goes beyond disciplinary thinking and its objective is to preserve the different realities and to confront them.(2004, p. 434). In the case of this chapter, our aim is to connect the academic disciplines of futures studies, human geography, and systemic design in a way that goes beyond drawing on the three disciplines separately. This raises the need to develop an interdisciplinary approach.

To start this analysis, it is crucial to first take stock of the various ways in which the three disciplines define resilience. To get a concise but good overview, the first step in our methodology is a quite straightforward literature review. This literature review consists of filtering the 10 most cited articles in the three fields that mention resilience as a core concept. We do this by focusing on two of the most prominent literature sources across all academic disciplines: Scopus and Web of Science. We used the search terms futures studies AND resilience; human geography AND resilience; systemic design AND resilience. While this may seem like a rather straightforward review process, previously executed by a range of authors in all three fields (REFS), the first interdisciplinary hurdles show up here. While human geography is an established field with its own category in the search engines, futures studies are rather less so, and span disciplines. Therefore, the futures studies literature was further filtered by searching for social science and manually filtering out papers that were far outside the scope of this current chapter, such as is in the field of healthcare where resilience is a popular term also but used with a different meaning (e.g., recovering after disease). For systemic design, the search terms were modified slightly to narrow down the results: design theory * resilience * systems theory. The results were filtered by amount of citations and the top 10 papers were scanned for their definition of resilience.

For each of the disciplines a brief synthesis of the definitions within the discipline is made, outlining the main points of interest and the general way the discipline talks about resilience. This taking-stock of the various disciplines serves as input for the discussion section, in which we look for differences, similarities, and a way to synthesize the knowledge from the three disciplines. A literature review such as this one can always be more extensive, but due to time limitations, we have chosen to focus on the 10 most cited articles to get a general overview and test this interdisciplinary approach in order to draw lessons for resilience in the Anthropocene—the main aim of this chapter.

0.1.3: Results

0.1.3.1: Insights from human geography

The reviewed articles on resilience in the field of human geography (see Table 0.1.1) show the discipline’s flexibility and suitability to address challenges presented by the Anthropocene, such as climate change. However, many articles do not specify their definition of resilience, which they assume to be known by the reader. The reviewed articles show four key dimensions of resilience in the field of human geography: (1) nature-society relation; (2) scale and governance; (3) knowledge and power; and (4) local, place-based perspectives.

Table 0.1.1

The first dimension of resilience research in human geography discusses the nature-society or nature-culture relation and points to the often-undertheorized social dimensions of resilience. All reviewed articles point to a certain extent to the importance of the relation between nature and society. Human geographers have played an important role in challenging the predominance of ecology-centric approaches to resilience. Brown (2014) discusses the social turn in resilience applied to global environmental change and concludes that there are significant advances and a much greater engagement and reflection on social dimensions, manifested in growing literature and debates on social dynamics. An et al. (2016) highlight the role of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) in resilience research.

A second dimension of geographical resilience research is its focus on planetary boundaries: physical limits to human activities. This dimension relates to the need for a multilevel and multiscalar approach to sustainability and resilience governance. Cumming et al. (2013) discuss the concept of landscape resilience and highlight the need for finding an appropriate match between the scales of demands on ecosystems by human societies and the scales at which ecosystems are capable of meeting these demands. Gruby and Basurto (2013) highlight that less distributed decision making in the overall nested governance system could threaten the sustainability and resilience of coral reefs in the long term by constraining institutional innovation and diversity. Their results demonstrate the potential for interdisciplinary dialog to advance the research frontier on multilevel governance for large common pool resources. Also related to scale, Jonas (2011) discusses the concept of regional resilience and highlights that for resilience: the knowledge of the internal capacities of regions matters as much as their external relations.

A third dimension that human geography adds to resilience research is the interaction between knowledge and power. The geography literature challenges the often very Eurocentric and neoliberal perspectives on resilience by using case studies from the Global South and emphasizing the importance of different epistemologies and ontologies, such as the example of local livelihood adaptation strategies in a village in Mozambique by Osbahr et al. (2008). Brown (2014) points to how resilience is similar to sustainability, as both concepts can act as boundary objects or bridging concepts and may be co-opted by different interests. Crabtree (2006) highlights how the main challenges for resilience building come from trust and power sharing issues. The fourth dimension is related to the previous one and points to the importance of place-based approaches and the incorporation of local knowledge. Brown (2014) points to the lack of a local-level dimension of resilience and a focus on community resilience. She discusses the growing number of community resilience projects. Various reviewed articles discuss the importance of place-based approaches to understand what matters to people (Crabtree, 2006; Devine-Wright, 2013; Tschakert et al., 2017).

0.1.3.2: Insights from systemic design

The transition from linear to holistic thinking requires approaches that encourage people to think outside the box and generate disruption (Considine, 2012). The role of design can be decisive in this process, as it deals with complex scenarios used to anticipate future situations and generate innovative outcomes. Recent work on design for sustainable development strategies reveals a transformation from a restricted technical, product, and process perspective to the large-scale system approach (Adams et al., 2016). Systemic Design provides a tool to design the flow of material and energy from one element of the system to another. This way it transforms outputs of one process into input for another, achieves zero emissions and generates resilient territories (Bistagnino, 2011).

To build resilient territories, systemic design thinking generates a multidisciplinary synergy tangible for all stakeholders in a decision-making process (Bason, 2014). It generates new relations among territorial entities that visualize hidden potentialities and boost a proactive collaboration among local actors. The Systemic Design approach includes other methodologies such as design thinking, codesign, user-centered design, bottom-up design, and participatory design. These all share an active engagement of users in the design process, consequently turning the end user into the focus of the resilience strategy formulation system and generating an innovative decision-making process (Allio, 2014). The conventional focus of policies is not the most efficient since it entails a top-down approach that does not consider the final users: the citizens. Therefore, participatory processes are a key element to design effective policy strategies, applying a bottom-up approach for policy planning (Ibid).

The Systemic Design expertise is proposed as an anticipatory tool for decision making presenting a new starting point across the holistic diagnosis or system mapping (Battistoni and Giraldo Nohra, 2017). The overview of such complex scenarios provides tools to encourage the generation of new cooperation channels among different local actors. Moreover, promotes a multidisciplinary approach that invites participants from different sectors to cocreate within an interdisciplinary scenario, new policies that will connect governments, citizenship, and industry. It provides an instrument which benefits all parties leading them to paths where all can reach new sustainable scenarios of economic profit and cooperation (Barbero, 2017) (Table 0.1.2).

Table 0.1.2

0.1.3.3: Insights from futures studies

When considering resilience, the future is inherent in the concept: a resilient system can handle various future disturbances, which can make it last for a long time in that future. The field of futures studies takes an active position toward the various possible futures that can be, by systematically assessing the probably, the possible, and the preferable (Bell, 2004). Through participatory interventions, futures studies can enter into a reciprocal cycle with the objects of their research intervention and thus also shape the future (Vervoort et al., 2015). While also using the classic geological definition of the Anthropocene, the futures field increasingly uses the concept as an opportunity to push for sustainability transformations. By inviting communities to futures workshops, participants gain agency over their futures and can develop scenarios rooted in their own existing practices. Engaging with futures work can in turn increase community resilience, which is conceptualized as adaptive capacity, or the potential to adjust to many different future contexts (Deacon et al., 2018). In these workshops, the aforementioned building blocks for resilience (Simonsen et al., 2014; Biggs et al., 2015) could provide very useful checks and balances to preserve the quality of the resulting futures and to preserve the element of resilience throughout.

A strong example is the work of Sircar et al. (2013), who constructed resilient energy futures for multistakeholder processes in the United Kingdom. They started with existing futures studies and made those assessments more robust by drawing in a variety of stakeholders to reflect about resilience in a set of possible future worlds (Ibid.) in a series of workshops. The process highlighted overlapping definitions of resilience in each future, outlined interdependencies, and allowed for a deeper and more collaborative reflection on the longer-term resilience implications. A process such as this connects all the building blocks for resilience: it maintains diversity and connectivity, allows for feedback, recognizes the complexity of the energy system at hand, encourages learning and participation and implements a type of multistakeholder, polycentric governance. A few elements are important to keep in mind with regard to the coupling of futures studies and community resilience. In all futures work, a systematic approach, just power balance and selection of the stakeholders present in the process are key for a successful outcome (Wiek and Iwaniec, 2014). The facilitation and debriefing is also vital to ensure a real impact beyond a futures brainstorm and to move the process into truly resilient community development (Pereira et al., 2018) (Table