Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

100 to more qualitative indicators such as social/mutual trust and the sense of belonging to a community, applying the domain of human and social resources and capacities. Besides identifying and selecting suitable indicators, it is crucial to understand how to develop, integrate, interpret and apply indicators (Jülich, 2018; Bahadur and Tanner, 2014). Concrete instructions are needed to provide a useful source of information for proper indicator application in practice and we recommend using some form of guideline for community resilience indicator development (see for example Becker et al., 2015). In particular, the possible methods of data collection for the constituent parts of this framework require attention, since they affect not only the methods adopted to parameterise the indicators but also the scale of application. 5.3 Reflections on the results and emBRACE methodology and limits of the findings The term “resilience” is both ubiquitous and indeterminate. Similarly, “community” is equally pervasive and prone to common sense understandings which appear to obviate critical discursive engagement. Together, the two concepts represent both a challenge and an opportunity to influence the shape of effective and inclusive disaster risk reduction. The frequently simplistic and bounded uses of “community resilience” (across a range of sectors but most particularly in the civil protection and emergency management fields) limit the reach of risk reduction endeavours through a narrow focus on technical interventions at the expense of recognizing and enabling social transformations. The proposed three-layered framework for characterizing community resilience was developed deductively by considering theoretical approaches of resilience from various disciplinary backgrounds and state-of-the-art research, and it was also developed inductively based on empirical insights from our case study work. The result is a theory-informed heuristic that has the potential to guide empirical research as well as disaster management and community development in a more inclusive and expansive way. Research and practice rarely include all elements we have identified but often focus on some specific domains and their interaction in more detail. When guiding disaster management and community development the framework helps to highlight the importance of the multiple factors that are related to community resilience. Whether the framework is to inform scientific or more practical applications, in most cases it will be necessary to adapt the framework to the specific context in which it is applied, e.g. cultural background, hazard types or the socio-political context. This framework was developed in a European context, and while the research team has drawn upon their wider research knowledge and experience it was not tested outside that geographic boundary. The emBRACE framework was developed as a heuristic device, i.e. a strategy based on experience and as an aid to communication and understanding, but it is not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect. The framework should be subject to further research both for further conceptualizing community resilience and applying and specifying the framework in various contexts of community resilience.