Efforts to apply science to understand and manage change have provoked a range of theories to facilitate discussion and generate ideas to test. Two theories of current interest have emerged from radically different perspectives. Resilience was originally developed within the natural sciences to better examine non-linear change in ecosystems. The social sciences developed Vulnerability as a conceptual framework to assess the potential for harm to various agents, processes and factors in society as a “function of exposure and sensitivity to hazard and the capacity to adapt.”

Breaking from the conventional assumption that all systems are at stable, steady state, resilience offers a view of systems far from steady state, where even tiny perturbations can shift the system into another stability domain or regime of behavior, sometimes irreversibly. From this perspective, resilience can be measured as “the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system redefines its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior.” Vulnerability accounts for the natural context in assessing the distribution of natural resources and prior stressors. However, it focuses primarily on the fate and influence of agents (as victims and/or actors) as it assesses adaptive capacity, sensitivity, and exposure to the impacts of shocks and stressors.

Both concepts offer useful and complementary views of the factors and interactions that influence the stability and persistence of social-ecosystems and their component parts. As no single concept adequately accounts for the diversity of factors influencing the dynamics of complex, adaptive systems, the similarities and contrasts found in applying both resilience and vulnerability can enrich both theories as well as add depth to our understanding of change in the face of uncertainty.

Building on the Decisions & Governance group, RPV is well situated to launch more intensive activities on water and governance.

Current Projects:

• SafeLand is a large-scale, integrating collaborative research project funded by the The Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7) of the European Commission. This project SafeLand is a Large-scale integrating Collaborative research project funded by the The Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7) of the European Commission.
  
  
• The RESPONSES project is a collaborative research project funded by the EU Framework Programme 7 (FP7) that intends to scope out the way forward for the EU to bring about deep emissions reductions and mainstream mitigation and adaptation.
  
  

• The Complexity: Agents, Volatility, Evidence and Scale (CAVES) project produced models of the evolution of social networks conditioned by interaction among social institutions and the physical and biological environment.
  
  
• The The New Approaches to Adaptive Water Management Under Uncertainty (NeWater) project applied concepts of participation and adaptive management to selected European, Asian and African river systems with a focus on processes for dealing with the inherent uncertainty.
  
  
• The Water Scenarios for Europe and for Neighboring States (SCENES) project examined the future of water quality and quantity for Europe as a whole and for four regions within. It represents one of the first attempts to deal more rigorously with policy making in conditions of high uncertainty by iteratively challenging qualitative methods (storyline development) with sound quantitative modeling and analysis.
  

For more information, contact Jan Sendzimir.

Responsible for this page: Jun Watabe
Last updated: 28 Jan 2011