Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

65 resilience in terms of economic, physical, and social recovery from a disturbance back to a single state [10,17]. The importance of resilience in disaster risk management/reduction was highlighted by the adoption in 2005 of the Hyogo Declaration: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). The 10-year Hyogo framework for action provided guidance to various sectors and stakeholders on developing legislative and institutional frameworks to reduce disaster risk. The actions comprised the assessment and monitoring of risks, building a culture of safety and resilience, reducing risk factors, and improving disaster preparedness. In 2015, the strategy was superseded by the 2015–2030 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). The Sendai Framework action priorities include understanding disaster risk, strengthening disaster risk governance, investing in DRR for resilience, enhancing disaster preparedness and building back better. The fourth priority in the Sendai Framework highlights a shift from recovery to the norm or status quo (bounce back), to recovery to an improved state by building better and improving response to future risk (bouncing forward). 1.1.4. Social Sciences Resilience studies in ecological, engineering, and disaster risk reduction domains have yet to account for the underlying socioeconomic inequities that shape the resilience of vulnerable populations to harmand havemostly focused on the physical resilience of infrastructure [18]. As such, resilience in the social sciences domain emerged to explore the factors that shape how individuals and communities respond to climate change hazards and risks [19]. The emphasis on preserving a steady state frequently shapes how governments, cities, and professionals frame climate change resilience and respond to hazards. It also highlights the need to evaluate if the status quo is meeting the needs of vulnerable populations [20]. Can a community be considered resilient if it bounces back to a state that reinforces structural inequities across race, class, gender, and income levels? For example, research has shown that low-income communities are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves because of limited access to air-conditioning, utility poverty, and low housing quality [21,22]. In this scenario, recovery to a norm where low- income communities remain vulnerable does little to prepare them for future events. In a study on the relationship between social and ecological resilience, social resilience was defined as, “the ability of groups and communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political, and environmental change” [19]. Specifically, questions of resilience to what, of what, and for whom are explored. By recognizing differential vulnerabilities to climate change impacts due to existing inequities within communities, resilience efforts move away from only focusing on short-term recovery to “support the immune system of social systems” [14]. 1.2. Resilience in Practice As discussed above, the debate on resilience definitions has mainly emerged from four academic domains: ecology, engineering, disaster risk reduction, and the social sciences. Most efforts currently adopted are driven by one or two resilience academic domains, mainly engineering and disaster risk reduction. However, as Lorenz states, “given the nature of cross-scale problems that do not adhere to system boundaries or can even arise from interacting systems, disciplinary approaches reach their limits” [14]. More specifically, because how we define and understand resilience impacts how we operationalize, apply, measure, and evaluate the resilience of systems, efforts from these four academic domains have resulted in divergent resiliency measurements and applications. As such, understanding the multiple theoretical frameworks (academic domains) of resilience in the development of strategies and guidance tools is critical. Despite this challenge, there are limited efforts to examine how resilience has translated into practice. Do professionals employ a bouncing-back approach to resilience, as in the engineering and disaster risk domains, or do they adopt other approaches, as in the ecology and social sciences domain? In their study comparing conceptualizations of urban climate resilience in theory and practices, Meerow and Stults found that amongst practitioners working for local United States governments, resilience was mostly defined through an engineering perspective [23]. They also found that practitioners indicated robustness as an important characteristic of resilience [23]. Similar approaches to resilience were also found in interviews with construction stakeholders and local authorities in the UK [24]. Because of its abstract nature and the challenges in operationalizing the concept, planning for resilience is a significant challenge for decision-makers. In the building sector, researchers have suggested the need for resilience metrics and guidance to inform building stakeholders including building owners, managers, residents, architects, engineers, community organizations, and policymakers. In his 2008 book, Bosher states that a resilient built environment, “should be designed, located, built, operated and maintained in a way that maximizes the ability of built assets, associated support systems (physical and institutional) and the people that reside or work