Testing the Resilience Activation Framework: A Model of How Social Resources Promotes Recovery from Disaster

• In Event: 181 - Regular Session. Disasters: Resilience, Vulnerability, and Risk

Abstract

A number of governmental agencies have called for enhancing citizen’s resilience as a means of preparing populations in advance of disasters, and as a counter-balance to social and individual vulnerabilities. This increasing scholarly, policy and programmatic interest in promoting individual and communal resilience presents a challenge to the research and practice communities: to develop a translational framework that can accommodate multi-disciplinary scientific perspectives into a single, applied model. The Resilience Activation Framework provides a basis for testing how access to social resources, such as formal and informal social support and help, promotes positive adaptation or reduced psychopathology among individuals and communities exposed to the acute collective stressors associated with disasters, whether manmade, natural, or technological in origin. This paper provides an account of the development of the Resilience Activation Framework and an outline of data that will be collected in the Spring of 2014 from communities recovering from the BP oil spill allowing for the testing of the framework (with results to be presented in August).

Authors

• Brian Mayer, University of Arizona

• David M. Abramson

• Lynn Grattan, University of Maryland