Resilience

The Resilience theme is focused on building infrastructures and systems that can withstand and adapt to the profound challenges of environmental degradation and climate change.

As societies face increasing threats from biodiversity loss, resource depletion, socio-economic volatility and geopolitical instability, resilience has become essential to safeguarding health, prosperity and sustainability. Our vision is of infrastructures—physical, social and ecological—that are not only robust to shocks but are also adaptive, inclusive and capable of supporting long-term transformation. 

We bring together expertise across physical and social sciences to understand the drivers of vulnerability and risk, and to translate this knowledge into practical solutions. Working with external partners, we develop approaches that integrate disaster response with proactive planning, including vulnerability assessment, risk management, risk transfer and social protection mechanisms. By embedding resilience into infrastructures at local, national and global scales, we aim to reduce exposure to hazards, strengthen adaptive capacity and create pathways for sustainable development in a rapidly changing world. 

Key Institutes and Centres:

Case Studies

 

Resilience Theme Lead

 

Dr Ben Parkes, Lecturer in Climate Resilience

Ben is a lecturer in Climate Resilience in the Department of Civil Engineering and Management. His research focus is on mitigating or adapting to the impacts of climate change. The topics he researches range from water access for crops, to aircraft emissions to sustainable computing. His teaching has two major components, sustainability of infrastructure systems to the first year civil engineering students and climate impacts analysis to the fourth years.