Disasters and communities: understanding social resilience

Social resilience is the capacity of social groups and communities to recover from, or respond positively to, crises. In this paper, we review the multifaceted nature of social resilience, and how this capacity is thought to have various properties, notably resistance, recovery and creativity. We also discuss the idea that social groups within a community differ insofar as their levels of resilience and the threats to which they are resilient. While research in the social sciences suggests that social resilience is a ‘naturally emergent’ response to disaster, we argue that emergency management plans must recognise and build on this capacity, and that improved indicators of social resilience are a priority area for future research.