Networked resilience - living with unorganisable uncertainty

In this paper, we explore how unforeseen crises in local communities can be conceptualised as events with substantial uncertainty with respect to the tasks, solutions and volumes for a local community, and how largely nonformalised qualities represent a significant potential for networked resilience. These dimensions are closely linked to the social fabric of local communities, and to the ability to couple formal crisis management resources with these intangible attributes of with civil societies. Networked resilience is exemplified and discussed in light of crises and events that have challenged societal safety. While structured and organised dimensions of community resilience draw on many of the principles of professionalised bureaucracy, these dimensions fall short when challenges are not characterised by the preconditions for well-functioning bureaucracies; known tasks, known solutions, known volumes. Schiefloe's Pentagon model for analysing formal and informal dimensions of organisations highlights both structural and material factors on the formal side, and cultural, interactional and relational factors on the informal side. In the paper, we discuss a theoretical and practical perspective on networked community resilience and show how it can be used to analyse the interplay between actors in the face of different types of crises. The paper's perspective on networked resilience implies a dynamic capability base, where informal social structures and corresponding social capital constitute the kind of dynamic, shared and negotiated capacities for dealing with the unforeseen and uncertainties that buffers like planned, physical resources and fixed organisational structures alone can not afford.

Keywords: Networked resilience, Complex adaptive systems, Uncertainty, Crisis management, Informal resources.