What makes a community resilient in the face of crisis? This foundational article presents a theory of community resilience that draws from diverse disciplines to explain how communities can adapt, recover, and thrive after disaster.
At its core, community resilience is not a fixed trait but a process—one that connects a community’s adaptive capacities to successful adaptation after adversity. These capacities span four essential domains:
Economic Development
Social Capital
Information & Communication
Community Competence
Together, they form a flexible, actionable strategy for disaster preparedness and long-term wellness.
The model defines resilience outcomes as high and equitable levels of mental health, functioning, and quality of life—key indicators of population wellness. Importantly, building resilience means more than reacting to crisis: it involves reducing risks and inequities, strengthening social support systems, fostering local engagement, and preparing for uncertainty by ensuring trusted, adaptable information channels are in place.
Whether you’re a policymaker, practitioner, or community leader, this article offers an essential framework for understanding and nurturing collective resilience in an age of uncertainty.
