Creating a More Resilient Society

Resilient: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Google resilient society or building resilient society to find more than you would ever want to know about the subject. Here is a potpourri:

"Resiliency is what happens when one regains functioning after adversity." -- Norman Garmezy, 1993

A resilient society depends on active, engaged citizens. The way for Washington to encourage resilience is not to throw more money at problems or to place new burdens on business. Government should harness the inherent strength of the American people and the private sector in order to build a society that may bend—but not break—if catastrophe does strike. [...]

We can help strengthen citizen resilience, though, particularly through Community Emergency Response Teams—organized groups of trained and equipped citizens that can perform lifesaving activities before public-safety first responders arrive and also support those first responders once they’re on the scene. And when people provide assistance in good faith after a disaster, we should shield them from lawsuits. After Katrina, concerns about liability protection prevented hundreds of churches from helping the evacuation effort. The Good Samaritan shouldn’t have to retain a lawyer.

Further, we must set clear standards, based on proven practices, so that local leaders can build resilience across the country, making clear to citizens, businesses, and charitable organizations what their roles will be when disaster strikes.

----Rudy Giuliani, The Resilient Society, City Journal, Winter 2008.

"Resiliency is displaced in individuals as optimism, resourcefulness, and determination. In fact, "Resilience has historically been of the United State's great national strengths. It was the quality that helped tame a raw continent and then allowed the country to cope with the extraordinary challenges that occasionally placed the American experiment in peril. ..."

From: America the Resilient, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008.

Building More Resilient Communities to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century (Australia)

Advice to the Administration and Congress: Take Actions to make our nation resilient to severe weather and climate change

Council on Foreign Relations, "The Edge of Disaster": Building a Resilient Nation

USGS A National Program to Assess Hazarads, Risk, and Resiliency

The Heritage Foundation, Resiliency and Public-Private Partnerships to Enhance Homeland Security, Backgrounder #2510, June 24, 2008.