Abstract
Crises are part of our reality and, we need to learn how to not only cope with them but attempt to emerge even stronger. In addition to relevant approaches such as crisis management, resilience is a promising concept to deal with crises. Resilience is the capability to resist and potentially thrive in a period of pressure, disturbance or change with solutions, actions, or development that are sustainable.
In this report, we focus on social resilience of communities as well as on bottom-up initiatives (BUIs) which respond spontaneously and in a self-organized manner to a crisis in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. We seek to understand how BUIs relate to the concept of resilience.
We developed a comprehensive conceptual framework to better understand the relationships between community resilience and BUIs. Over 70 BUIs were identified and seven of them selected for more in-depth case studies.
The analysis in this study showed that the interaction between resilience and BUIs must be analysed from two different perspectives: Resilience Building, shows the possible impact of BUIs on community resilience, and Enabling Actions, describes the fact that spontaneous emergence of BUIs is based on existing capabilities within the community.
Overall, we conclude that BUIs are positively influencing community resilience. We have identified important components (People-Place Connection; Engaged Governance; Community Networks; Knowledge, Skills, & Learning; Diverse & Innovative Economy; and Community Infrastructure) and competencies (Agency and Self-Organizing) that are relevant for a resilient community reaction.
Finally, we formulated three recommendations to increase community resilience and establish a more resilient culture.