The case for resilience: a comparative analysis

The utility of the concept of resiliency as a paradigm for managing society’s ability to resist, absorb, and recover from extreme events is dependent upon the ability to evaluate a community’s resilience and to assess the potential impacts of intentional and unintentional interventions. A framework for developing and using resilience metrics is presented. The critical components of resilience for three diverse Atlantic coastal communities subject to potential catastrophic coastal flooding are developed, described, and compared using this framework. The analysis demonstrates that, although the three areas face a common threat, they should adopt different resilience enhancing strategies that are determined by local structural, economic, and social conditions.