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The Advent of Resilience Resilience has become a fashionable buzzword in recent years. The term is frequently found in many different discourses, ranging from the sports pages (resilient teams overcoming late-game deficits) to the international news (the war in Iraq), from reports of natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina) to policy papers on the protection of critical infrastructures (the 2001 California blackout). It appears that everything (organizations, cities, nations) and everybody (from schoolteachers to the US president) can and should be resilient.

This advent of the resilience concept in popular and professional discourse can be viewed as a function of a rising need for resilience. If we accept that dominant trends such as globalization, increasing interdependence and complexity, the spread of potentially dangerous technologies, new forms of terrorism, and climate change create new and unimaginable threats to modern societies, it is only a small step to recognizing and accepting the inherent shortcomings of contemporary approaches to prevention and preparation. If we cannot predict or foresee the urgent threats we face, prevention and preparation become difficult. The concept of resilience holds the promise of an answer.