II. Meanings and Attributes of Resilience

Question 1

Ecosystem’s ability to maintain basic functional characteristics in the face of disturbance

Answer 1

Resilience

Question 2

A system’s ability to bounce back to its previous state

Answer 2

Static “engineering” resilience

Question 3

Maintaining key functions when perturbed

Answer 3

Dynamic “ecological” resilience

Question 4

This ecological framing of resilience and understanding of ecosystems as dynamic, complex, and adaptive was seminal to the development of what theory?

Answer 4

Socio-ecological system (SES) theory

Question 5

Ability of human communities to withstand external shocks or perturbations to their infrastructure, such as environmental variability or social, economic or political upheaval, and to recover from such perturbations

Answer 5

Resilience

Question 6

Resilience is identified as a product of:

• The amount of perturbation a system can endure without losing its key functions or changing states
• The system’s ability to self-organize
• The system’s capacity for adaptation and learning

Answer 6

SES literature

Question 7

In the case of chronic adversity, it refers to long-term outcomes, such as children eventually achieving a normal adulthood

Answer 7

Emergent resilience

Question 8

Ability of an urban system, and all its constituent socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales, to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity

Answer 8

Urban resilience

Question 9

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Report)

Answer 9

Sustainable development