IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jchals/v11y2020i2p28-d431590.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Systems Approach to Building Community Capacity and Resilience

Author

Listed:
  • Bernard Amadei

    (Department of Civil Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0428, USA)

Abstract

Capacity and resilience are two closely aligned concepts in human development. They both contribute to increasing the ability of societies to cope with and adapt to challenging and adverse perturbations that may affect systems the societies depend upon. A traditional approach to building capacity and resilience at the community scale is to address in a fragmented manner specific issues at play in institutional, socio-economic, environmental, and infrastructure systems that may prevent the delivery of adequate community services and meeting development goals. This compartmentalized approach, driven by a need to reach some form of satisfactory community equilibrium, fails to recognize the interactions and interconnectedness that exist among community systems, which, if addressed, could solve multiple issues more effectively. It also does not account for the complex, adaptive, and dynamic nature of communities. A resilient community is more than just a collection of well-functioning silos. This paper proposes a system dynamics approach to account for the dynamic and adaptive nature of communities when developing capacity-building strategies toward strengthening their ability to deliver services and deal with adverse events. A case study of small-scale community capacity assessment around the service of wastewater and sewage treatment published elsewhere is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernard Amadei, 2020. "A Systems Approach to Building Community Capacity and Resilience," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-23, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jchals:v:11:y:2020:i:2:p:28-:d:431590
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/11/2/28/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/11/2/28/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andy Sumner & Christopher Hoy & Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, 2020. "Estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-43, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Guido Schmidt-Traub & Mariana Mazzucato & Dirk Messner & Nebojsa Nakicenovic & Johan Rockström, 2019. "Six Transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 2(9), pages 805-814, September.
    3. Cornwall, Andrea & Jewkes, Rachel, 1995. "What is participatory research?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 41(12), pages 1667-1676, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bernard Amadei, 2021. "Systemic Modeling of the Peace–Development Nexus," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernard Amadei, 2021. "Systemic Modeling of the Peace–Development Nexus," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, February.
    2. Gutiérrez-Romero, Roxana & Ahamed, Mostak, 2021. "COVID-19 response needs to broaden financial inclusion to curb the rise in poverty," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    3. Caroline Patsias & Anne Latendresse & Laurence Bherer, 2013. "Participatory Democracy, Decentralization and Local Governance: the Montreal Participatory Budget in the light of ‘Empowered Participatory Governance’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(6), pages 2214-2230, November.
    4. de Palma, André & Vosough, Shaghayegh & Liao, Feixiong, 2022. "An overview of effects of COVID-19 on mobility and lifestyle: 18 months since the outbreak," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 372-397.
    5. Sonika Redhu & Pragati Jain, 2024. "Unveiling the nexus between water scarcity and socioeconomic development in the water-scarce countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 26(8), pages 19557-19577, August.
    6. Muller, Seán M., 2021. "The dangers of performative scientism as the alternative to anti-scientific policymaking: A critical, preliminary assessment of South Africa’s Covid-19 response and its consequences," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    7. Brum, Matias & De Rosa, Mauricio, 2021. "Too little but not too late: nowcasting poverty and cash transfers’ incidence during COVID-19’s crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    8. David Klenert & Franziska Funke & Linus Mattauch & Brian O’Callaghan, 2020. "Five Lessons from COVID-19 for Advancing Climate Change Mitigation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(4), pages 751-778, August.
    9. Anubhab Gupta & Heng Zhu & Miki Khanh Doan & Aleksandr Michuda & Binoy Majumder, 2021. "Economic Impacts of the COVID−19 Lockdown in a Remittance‐Dependent Region," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(2), pages 466-485, March.
    10. Ida Kubiszewski & Kenneth Mulder & Diane Jarvis & Robert Costanza, 2022. "Toward better measurement of sustainable development and wellbeing: A small number of SDG indicators reliably predict life satisfaction," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 139-148, February.
    11. Quibria, M.G., 2020. "Poverty and Policy in the Developing World: Before and After the Pandemic," MPRA Paper 104240, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Oct 2020.
    12. Ines Testoni & Irene Nencioni & Maibrit Arbien & Erika Iacona & Francesca Marrella & Vittoria Gorzegno & Cristina Selmi & Francesca Vianello & Alfonso Nava & Adriano Zamperini & Michael Alexander Wies, 2021. "Mental Health in Prison: Integrating the Perspectives of Prison Staff," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-14, October.
    13. Matías Brum & Mauricio de Rosa, 2020. "Too little but not too late. Nowcasting poverty and cash transfers' incidence in Uruguay during COVID-19's crisis," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 20-09, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    14. Wietzke, Frank-Borge, 2024. "Perceptions of social class in Africa. Results from a conjoint experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    15. Alkire, Sabina & Nogales, Ricardo & Quinn, Natalie Naïri & Suppa, Nicolai, 2021. "Global multidimensional poverty and COVID-19: A decade of progress at risk?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    16. Hammond, James & Siegal, Kim & Milner, Daniel & Elimu, Emmanuel & Vail, Taylor & Cathala, Paul & Gatera, Arsene & Karim, Azfar & Lee, Ja-Eun & Douxchamps, Sabine & Tu, Mai Thanh & Ouma, Emily & Lukuyu, 2022. "Perceived effects of COVID-19 restrictions on smallholder farmers: Evidence from seven lower- and middle-income countries," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    17. Björn Mestdagh & Olivier Sempiga & Luc Van Liedekerke, 2023. "The Impact of External Shocks on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Linking the COVID-19 Pandemic to SDG Implementation at the Local Government Level," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-18, April.
    18. Koundouri, Phoebe & Theodossiou, Nicolaos & Stavridis, Charalampos & Devves, Stathis & Plataniotis, Angelos, 2022. "A methodology for linking the Energy-related Policies of the European Green Deal to the 17 SDGs using Machine Learning," MPRA Paper 122118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Tobias Wulfert & Robert Woroch & Gero Strobel & Thorsten Schoormann & Leonardo Banh, 2024. "E-commerce ecosystems as catalysts for sustainability: A multi-case analysis," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 34(1), pages 1-21, December.
    20. Daniel Béland & Alex Jingwei He & M Ramesh, 2022. "COVID-19, crisis responses, and public policies: from the persistence of inequalities to the importance of policy design [The impact of COVID-19 on gender equality]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(2), pages 187-198.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jchals:v:11:y:2020:i:2:p:28-:d:431590. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.