ABSTRACT
Resilience is gaining popularity as a term to rally forces for the betterment of societies in the face of hardship and adversity. Like stress and strain, the word “resilience” has roots in engineering, psychology, and system sciences. The ubiquity of the term fl ags a call for interdisciplinary and multi-level considerations in studying and fostering resilience factors. Observing disaster management, crisis recovery, and preparedness eff orts, the fi ndings presented in this chapter indicate the need for a comprehensive framework, research on individual and collective processes, and interventions that are multi-prong and multi-sectoral. In this chapter, we will review the conceptual underpinnings and scope of resilience, document the multi-layers of evidence from mixed methods approaches, and will present a series of tools that address some of the critical requirements too often overlooked in planned interventions. The eff ort towards developing resilience that will be described below come from our ongoing research in individual and collective social and organizational psychology, cross-fertilized by interdisciplinary work in social sciences, in risk sciences, in health sciences, and public policy.
