Chain of resilience: an innovativve, emerging approach to an international conundrum

Background The global emphasis on increasing capacity in all communities to meet the growing challenge of disasters threats, be they natural, technological, environmental or manmade hazards, continues to gain momentum. Disaster resilience, now a catch-cry to reduce the effects of disaster impacts on communities commonly, depicts conceptual ambiguity. The stimulus and momentum for building disaster resilience is demonstrated in the economic losses during the period July 2013-June 2014 which saw the fourth consecutive year where disaster losses exceeded $100 billon; 16,300 people died and 358 internationally reported disasters affected 113 million people. International and national standards and frameworks, such as the UN’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 – 2030; the United Kingdom’s Strategic National Framework on Community Resilience (2011); the United States’ Disaster Resilience: A national imperative (2012), and the Australian National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (2011) underpin concepts to build community resilience to disasters. Method A recent review of community and disaster resilience in peer reviewed and selected grey literature identified multiple multidisciplinary definitions. Results No consistent definition emerged from the review. ‘Resilience’ presents as a cross-disciplinary, definitional conundrum for those working to build and measure disaster resilience. Conclusion This paper offers a unique recommendation to build resilience across all sectors of society and all phases of the disaster cycle by adopting and adapting the internationally recognised, successful, community-based ‘Chain of Survival’ for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest as a Chain of Resilience. Developing a community-based Chain of Resilience holds enormous potential for providing a much needed framework to create a consistent approach to building resilience across all sectors of society while maintaining conceptual flexibility for situational differences