Preliminary Indicators for Social and Human Resilience: An Exploratory Approach for Infrastructure Safety

Extreme events derived from climate change, as floods, heat waves, power outages, and cascading failures are placing critical infrastructures under increasing pressures. This paper starts with the assumption that critical infrastructures are socio-technical systems: their performance depends not only on physical assets, but also on the social vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience of the populations and territories they serve. Developed within the framework of the MED-IREN project, this article proposes a participatory methodological framework to integrate social vulnerability and human resilience into the climate preparedness of critical infrastructures in Mediterranean regions. Participation is understood as an integral component of policymaking and a key condition for governance under pressure. In addition, this position paper highlights the importance of decision-support data centres dedicated to resilience and prevention policies, as well as research centres focused on future studies through cross-disciplinary methodological approaches, including ethnography, qualitative research, and scenario-building exercises. The main contribution is to frame infrastructure resilience as a socio-technical and participatory process oriented towards social justice, preparedness, and long-term adaptation to climate uncertainty.

Keywords: Social vulnerability, social resilience, human resilience, critical infrastructure, climate preparedness, Mediterranean regions, participatory methodological framework, decision support, Nature-based Solutions.