@book{JRC34042,
	editor = {},
	address = {Davos (Switzerland)},
	year = {2006},
	author = {Sapountzaki K and Dandoulaki M},
	isbn = {},
	abstract = {The international discourse on hazards and risks has been engaged for decades with the term resilience and its value as regards its potential use in the risk management process. However, the term has not been clarified yet. This is evidenced by the multitude of definitions attempting to grasp the content of the term. Is it a notion identifying with adaptive capacity or not? While it has been agreed that resilience contributes to the maintenance / recovery of a social system after a hazard stress or a disaster strike there are still disputes as to whether resilience guarantees stability or implies the fluctuation of the system. The most crucial suspended query is under what terms resilience is a desirable attitude of social systems and how it might become useful for the planning process.
		The present work attempts to answer the queries by offering insights to a plurality of resilience practices. The authors follow a deductive process. Starting from the commonly accepted assumptions on the meaning of resilience they pick out accordingly a series of resilience prac-tices to subsequently make their comparative anatomy. These practices are selected so as to represent (a) a wide spectrum of risks both extreme and chronic, (b) a wide spectrum of social entities including individuals, households, firms and institutions and (c) various socio-economic and cultural contexts. The authors uncover the profile of the selected resilience practices by identifying: (1) the timing of their occurrence with respect to the risk evolution stages (e.g. pro-active and reactive resilience), (2) the factors triggering their development, (3) the resources / potentialities employed (behavioral, technological, economic, cultural, social etc), (4) the im-pact on the vulnerability state of both the social agent employing the practice and other agents and wider structures (physical, socio-economic, urban etc).
		Comparative consideration of the above aspects of resilience practices reveals their wavering impact on vulnerability, sometimes increasing another time decreasing. The analysis brings to light that resilience is often a mechanism transforming vulnerability to one hazard type to vul-nerability to another, or transforming physical to social vulnerability and vice versa; even a mechanism relocating vulnerability from one agent to another. Resilience transforms and redis-tributes vulnerability, therefore it is the key-issue in the formulation of multi-risk chains and settings. At the same time it is a means of defense of the individual actors against the shortcom-ings of planning owing to its deductive generalization. Hence resilience should not ever become a planning tool even if this was ever possible. It is rather an indicator of the limitations of plan-ning. It may only be used as a ruler to restrict the scope of planning and enhance its flexibility, i.e. its capability to leave unregulated room for self-organization and individualized action.  
		
		
		
		
		
		},
	title = {Resilience to Risks: The Hidden Defense against the Limitations of Planning},
	url = {},
	volume = {},
	number = {},
	journal = {},
	pages = {515-518},
	issn = {},
	publisher = {Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL},
	doi = {}
}