Organizing resilient infrastructure initiatives: A study on conceptualization, motivation, and operation of ten initiatives in the Netherlands

Abstract

Resilient infrastructure is critical to a sustainable and functioning society. Infrastructure management and (re)development are highly complex processes encompassing various stakeholders’ interests while they are pressured by the uncertainty of climate change and social transition. In response to these challenges, various resilience initiatives emerged with different motivations and approaches. The purpose of this research is to understand the interplay between motivations and organizational approaches as well as resilience conceptualization. This can provide insights into which domains of resilience have been focused on and what needs to be improved in their organizational approaches to realize motivations. This research specifically investigates ten resilient infrastructure initiatives in the Netherlands. By using scoping review and content analysis, our results highlight that resilience initiatives conceptualize resilience in different ways, mainly focusing on built and organizational resilience with a focus on long-term and wider geographic scope. Each initiative had several motivations, including 1) creating innovative solutions, 2) sharing knowledge, 3) promoting commitment and cooperation, and 4) promoting resilience. These motivations are reflected in the organizational approach. For example, there was a strong link between the motivation ‘creating shared knowledge’ and the organizational approach ‘research collaboration.’ Generic motivation such as ‘promoting resilience’ does not have one mainstreaming approach, which shows promoting resilience in practice is still in the exploration stage. This research provides major motivations and organizational approaches and their link within the resilient infrastructure initiatives which can contribute to better organizing similar initiatives aiming for resilient infrastructure.