Manifestations of societal resilience in local management of extreme events

Climate change causes weather events that could severely damage infrastructure and threaten lives and basic needs in local communities. In these situations, using all available resources and ensuring emergency preparedness at every level of society is crucial. Within Norway's emergency preparedness system, guided by the principles of responsibility, similarity, proximity, and cooperation, municipalities play a central role in crisis management. However, significant variation in municipal size, geography, and resources raises the question of how resilience manifests at the municipal level when responding to extreme weather events. This paper addresses the research question: How is resilience manifested at the municipal level in response to an extreme weather event? Drawing on community and societal resilience theory, including concepts such as adaptive capacity and graceful extensibility, the case study examines a small Norwegian municipality affected by Storm Amy in October 2025. The analysis draws on interviews, municipal documents, local media, and a citizen survey. Findings demonstrate that the most prominent manifestations of resilience arise from the interaction between formal municipal structures and informal community capacities. Municipal planning, technical systems, and predefined responsibilities, such as those embedded in the Emergency Preparedness Council, provide robustness. Yet the strongest resilience emerges through informal, citizen-driven adaptive capacities, including local knowledge, dense social networks, volunteerism, hamlet contact persons, hunting radio networks, and the role of local merchants. These relational mechanisms enable rapid improvisation and flexible responses, allowing the system to stretch beyond its designed limits when formal resources are insufficient. Overall, the study shows that small municipalities possess unique resilience advantages and that adaptive, informal, and relational capacities are the most impactful manifestations of municipal resilience during extreme weather events.

Keywords: Community resilience, Societal resilience, Emergency preparedness, Critical Infrastructures, Natural Hazard Events.