Community Disaster Resilience: A Short Academic Review

Community disaster resilience has become an influential concept in disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation and public health. It refers broadly to the capacities through which communities anticipate, prepare for, withstand, respond to, recover from and adapt to hazardous events. However, the literature remains conceptually fragmented. Existing reviews identify substantial variation in definitions, indicators, measurement tools and intervention strategies. This short academic review synthesises evidence from systematic reviews and recent review-level studies concerning four themes: conceptualisation, dimensions and measurement, community-based interventions, and social capital. The literature indicates that resilience is best understood as a dynamic and context-dependent process rather than a fixed community attribute or a simple capacity to “bounce back.” Social networks, local knowledge, communication, governance, economic resources, health services and preparedness are consistently identified as important dimensions. Nevertheless, measurement remains inconsistent, interventions are often insufficiently evaluated, and marginalised groups are not always meaningfully represented in participatory processes. Future research should prioritise longitudinal, equity-sensitive and mixed-method approaches that distinguish vulnerability from resilience and examine how resilience changes across the disaster cycle.

Background

Disasters produce impacts that extend beyond immediate physical damage. They can disrupt health services, livelihoods, social relationships, public institutions, housing, education and local economies. Consequently, disaster risk reduction has increasingly moved from an exclusively hazard-centred approach towards one that also examines the capacities of communities to anticipate and manage disruption.

Community disaster resilience is commonly associated with the ability of a community to resist, absorb, accommodate, recover from and adapt to the effects of hazards. Contemporary approaches also include transformation: the capacity to modify institutions, relationships and physical environments in ways that reduce future vulnerability. This broader interpretation distinguishes resilience from a narrow return to pre-disaster conditions. A community may recover physically while reproducing the inequalities and vulnerabilities that contributed to the original disaster.

Despite its increasing policy relevance, community resilience lacks a universally accepted definition. A systematic review of 80 relevant publications found no common definition and identified three broad approaches: resilience as a process of adaptation, resilience as the maintenance of functioning, and resilience as a set of attributes or capacities. The same review identified nine recurring elements: local knowledge; community networks and relationships; communication; health; governance and leadership; resources; economic investment; preparedness; and mental outlook.

This conceptual diversity has practical consequences. The way resilience is defined determines what is measured, which interventions are prioritised and whose capacities are recognised. For example, an index focused mainly on infrastructure may portray a community as resilient despite weak social cohesion or limited access to health services. Conversely, a community with strong social networks may remain highly exposed because it lacks safe housing, transport or institutional support. Resilience should therefore be understood as a multidimensional relationship between social capacities, material conditions, institutional arrangements and environmental risks.