Chapter 16: Modeling Disaster Resilience

Disasters, predicted to increase in intensity and frequency in the near future as a result of climate change, are cross-scale in their impact, disrupting functioning across multiple levels of socio-cultural systems in which individuals’ lives are embedded. Governments all over the world need policies to plan support for community preparedness and recovery from disasters and to this end they need to understand and model disaster resilience as accurately as possible. Disasters can be either rapid or slow onset events, requiring differing responses to facilitate resilience. These might be at community and/or individual scales. The interconnectedness of resilience at individual and community scales requires multilevel preparedness, responses and mitigation strategies. A useful lens with which to investigate these interconnections for policy creation is Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory. This chapter describes research conducted in four disaster impacted regional Australian towns using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory to assess and model disaster resilience. The four sites experienced flood, cyclone, bushfire and drought respectively, resulting in damage running into many millions of dollars. The research validated the use of Bronfenbrenner’s theory for modeling disaster resilience. Results highlighted several important areas for targeted government policy to promote disaster resilience, manage risk and reduce individuals’ vulnerability in diverse settings.