Dr. David Rosowsky, ISTPP fellow and professor of civil engineering at the University of Vermont, discusses possible definitions of resiliency in the context of civil engineering projects and their response to natural hazards in his paper, “Defining Resilience”. Dr. Rosowsky highlights that, across a variety of ways of defining resilience, there exists a common understanding that infrastructure considered to be ‘resilient’ is intended to survive extreme damage or use without being compromised. While his paper is predominately based on civil engineering scenarios and concepts, he also touches on the importance of social resilience in the forms of individual and community resiliency. Dr. Rosowsky concludes by pointing out there is no single definition of resilience, and that achieving resiliency requires collaboration between the technical realm of engineering and the social sciences.
