What Is Resilience According to the Grand Pathways Framework?

What is Resilience?

The Grand Pathways Framework outlined in this document recognizes that building resilience requires communities to start with the societal outcomes desired as a Nation: safe, secure, and healthy populations; connected and cohesive communities; a robust economy; and trusted governance. The Grand Pathways Framework represents a process for decision makers who must look across threats and hazards, find common needs and interdependencies, and devise paths forward to develop the science and technology needed to achieve these outcomes. In developing outcomes, the Grand Pathways Framework encourages users to advance equitable solutions through a systematic approach to assessing science and technology solutions that further resilient communities.[11]

The term resilience means different things in different contexts and in different communities.[12] Even within a single community or context, individuals may have different perceptions about what resilience entails:

It is an outcome or desired end state. For example, community leaders work to create a prosperous and just community that is resilient against current and future severe weather and climate hazards.

It is a system property. For example, business leaders work to ensure data centers and financial networks are resilient against cyber-attacks, physical threats, and natural hazards.

It is a process. For example, decision makers work to anticipate threats and hazards; to choose actions that avoid these threats and hazards wherever possible; to take steps to adapt to and/or withstand unavoidable threats and hazards; and if damage strikes, to build back better.

The Grand Pathways Framework considers a community to be people connected through common physical, social, virtual, or hybrid characteristics. It can include individuals and families, businesses, nonprofit groups, faith-based and community organizations, media outlets, and all levels of government.

Hereafter, the examples above are called “resilience modes.” Whether resilience is perceived as being an outcome, a system property, or a process (or all three modes), building resilience is neither simply top-down or bottom-up.[13] Effective and meaningful resilience is synergistic, building simultaneously upwards from the individual level and downwards from the national, or even international, level. A homeowner likely is not equipped with the knowledge or materials to harden their house against a hurricane, while a Federal strategy to harden homes against hurricanes is of little use unless homeowners and builders have the knowledge, resources, and ability to carry out the suggested actions. Resilience requires a synergy between high-level planners with the macro-level ability to predict and prepare for disruptions and community-level organizations and regulatory and enforcement agencies, as well as individuals who make these plans actionable on a day-to-day basis.

Effective and meaningful resilience is synergistic, building simultaneously upwards from the individual level and downwards from the national, or even international, level.

[11] See The Executive Office of the President. 2021. “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidentialactions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-thefederal-government/

[12] Moser, S., Meerow, S., Arnott, J. et al. 2019. “The turbulent world of resilience: interpretations and themes for transdisciplinary dialogue.” Climatic Change 153, 21–40 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2358-0

[13] National Research Council. 2012. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13457