Resilience
Ensuring societal stability during adverse and disruptive environmental change, at various scales and within different physical and social infrastructures, whilst protecting, restoring and sustaining our natural environments.
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 engineering, natural and social sciences, economics and governance 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:
- Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute
- Thomas Ashton Institute
- Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
- Manchester Environmental Research Institute
Case Studies
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How can we turn ambition into reality?
Manchester research is pioneering, interdisciplinary and – crucially – collaborative. Through our cross-sector partnerships, we catalyse change.
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UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities
UKCRIC is an integrated research capability with an ambition to underpin the renewal, sustainment and improvement of infrastructure and cities in the UK and elsewhere.
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Resilience Lead
Dr Ben Parkes, Senior Lecturer in Climate Resilience
Ben is a senior 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.