Special Issue 2021
Rethinking resilience in a post-pandemic world. Preparing for an uncertain future
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a powerful level of disruption to the world, clearly showing how difficult it is for countries, regions, local communities, businesses, and individuals to prepare for an uncertain and unpredictable future. Even weeks before the spread of the virus at global level, there were few clues, if any, that a pandemic was well under its way. We can only expect that more significant shocks and disruptions will occur in the future, even if it is quite difficult right now to gauge the exact form in which they will unfold. We can only anticipate that future disruptions might include compounded shocks, which will affect numerous jurisdictions given how intertwined various social-economic systems are at a global scale.
This complicated context calls for a better understanding of how resilience can be employed to better prepare us for dealing with future shocks. It is our belief that there should be a shift from resilience thinking, seen mostly as a theoretical and abstract framework guiding risk management at different scales, to resilience planning and resilience practice. Resilience planning can be roughly understood as applying the lens of resilience thinking to strategic planning in organizations and communities. Furthermore, resilience practice deals with applications of resilience thinking in real world settings, thus closing the gap from solely planning to actual implementation. Rethink resilience needs however to be done in conjunction with enhancing adaptive governance, a learning-based, flexible decision-making process, including a variety of actors from across all sectors, often placed at multiple levels.
In light of the above considerations, TRAS invites all interested authors to submit full length papers for a special issue on Rethinking resilience in a post-pandemic world. Preparing for an uncertain future. Submissions can consider the following, though other topics are assuredly welcome:
- Resilience planning – concept, principles, main characteristics and contributions. Examples of how it works in real community and/or organizational settings
- Adaptive governance – What are the most significant governance attributes which can impact the capacity of a system for managing resilience? Is it possible to define what “good governance” entails for a system capable of managing efficiently resilience?
- Resilience as competitive advantage – which are the organizations and communities which are emerging from the current crisis as winners? What are the innovative lessons others can learn from them?
- Rethinking urban resilience – cities are vital to our resilience. Until recently, city leaders have prepared to respond to and mitigate a large set of shocks, with emphasis on economic and climate change risks. Few cities if any have however truly prepared themselves for a pandemic such as the current one. Rethink urban resilience involves addressing how we design, build, and operate public spaces.
- Institutional & community resilience - factors generating resilience, resilience building processes, resilience and sustainable development - quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods studies are of interest
This special issue will be published in November-December 2021. Deadline for submission is September 1, 2021. All rules that apply for regular issues apply to this special issue as well – structure of articles, formatting, referencing etc. Please carefully consult the section on the websites labeled Instructions for authors.