Resilience and/or Vulnerability? Relationships and roles in risk mitigation strategies

Resilience and vulnerability represent two core-concepts in the disaster field, widely invoked as basic means for supporting risk mitigation strategies. Vulnerability has been in-depth investigated since the Seventies; resilience has been largely widespread in the disaster field over the last two decades, although a shared theoretical and operative approach to resilience is still missing and the relationships between vulnerability and resilience are still a nebulous matter. Hence this paper, based on a research work developed within the 7°FP Ensure Project, has been addressed to: in-depth investigate the concept of Resilience, in order to provide a conceptual model of its main “performance dimensions”, by integrating different disciplinary perspectives; explore, grounding both on scientific literature and on the proposed conceptual model of resilience, the relationships between vulnerability and resilience, highlighting common aspects and peculiarities, in order to better understand their respective roles in achieving risk reduction goals.