Community resilience: A multidisciplinary exploration for inclusive strategies and scalable solutions

Abstract

This paper evaluates literature across multiple disciplines and stakeholder types to identify commonalities and contradictions in definitions for community resilience. It aims to support cross-disciplinary discourse to build an interdisciplinary understanding of community resilience. This work identifies the differences between mono-, multi-, inter-, and cross-disciplinary approaches to inform community resilience strategies in academic and practice-based contexts.

Four themes for community resilience were identified through a review of cross-disciplinary literature. These include (1) diverse yet convergent definitions of community resilience and the evolution from equilibrium to adaptation to transformation; (2) equitable and inclusive strategies for the development of community resilience initiatives; (3) when and at what scale strategies should be implemented; and (4) community resilience as a process or an outcome.

This work is valuable to those seeking to familiarise themselves with the concept of community resilience, including educators who deliver courses on community resilience and policy-makers. It is novel in that it presents an interdisciplinary framework for navigating the community resilience discourse beyond individual professional boundaries.