Conceptualizing Cascading Effects of Resilience in Human–Water Systems

Li Xu, Feng Mao, James S. Famiglietti, John W. Pomeroy, Claudia Pahl-Wostl

Multisystemic Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation in Contexts of Change
March, 2021
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190095888.001.0001

Abstract:
People and water interact over time and across space as coupled systems. Investigating the resilience of such coupling should take a multisystemic approach to address not only the resilience in different human and water systems, but also the interrelationship between their resilience processes. Based on the three framings of resilience in the coupled human–water context (i.e., social resilience, hydrological resilience, and socio-hydrological resilience), a conceptual framework is proposed for understanding the cascading effects of resilience along a chain of resilience change across systems and scales. The authors use a case example from a drainage basin in the Canadian Prairies to exemplify this framework and demonstrate how a change in the resilience of one system can exert an impact on the resilience of another, in socio-hydrological systems that are under the influence of both human activities and climate change.

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