This article is about:
01
What is resilience?
Resilience is the ability of an object, system, individual, or community to effectively cope, absorb, adapt, and recover from adverse events, stress, or change, while quickly maintaining or re-establishing initial conditions.
This concept is applicable in different areas:
- Psychology: a person’s ability to react positively to trauma, difficulty, or stress
- Engineering: The ability of a material or system to absorb shock or stress without breaking
- Ecology: the ability of an ecosystem to return to its original state after a disturbance
- CIVIL PROTECTION: ability of a territory or community to resist and adapt to extreme natural events, limiting damage and quickly resuming activities
Improving resilience means strengthening all these capacities, planning responses in advance, strengthening infrastructure and developing effective emergency management procedures.
02
The Resilience Diagram
The resilience diagram, adapted from Carlson et al. (2012), illustrates how a system evolves over time after a shock—such as an avalanche or any other natural hazard—and the resulting direct and indirect impacts on the entire system, for example on a section of human-made territory. The diagram illustrates the time required for a system to recover and return to its normal state after experiencing and adverse event.
When an event occurs, the systems “functionality” drops sharply, followed by a recovery phase that could
- allow the system to restore the state prior to the event,
- may even lead to improved conditions compared to the initial state—for example, through the implementation of additional preventive measures
- in some cases, not be possible to fully restore the pre-event conditions, resulting in a new equilibrium that is worse than the original state.
In the diagram several phases can be distinguished:
- Preparedness: This is the period before the event, in which strategies are put in place to address possible critical issues. These include planning (e.g. various civil protections plans), the acquisition of specific skills (attendance at courses and training programs), the creation of a support network and the implementation of warning systems.
- Mitigation: Measures to reduce the probability of an event. They include defence works, both temporary and permanent (active and passive) (also see “artificial avalanche triggering” and “permanent technical avalanche protection and its limits”), as well as actions aimed at reducing the exposure and vulnerability of hazardous elements.
- Response: Handling the event as it occurs. It includes the activation of protocols, and contingency plans, communication, coordination and the need to make quick decisions under stressful conditions.
- Recovery: Its goal is to restore the original conditions while incorporating lessons learned to refine strategies, enhance management efficiency, and strengthen preparedness for potential future events. This creates an integrated, cyclical approach to managing critical situations.
In civil protection, the concept of system balance refers to ordinary conditions, often called “peace”, as opposed to emergency states. When an event occurs, it can cause negative impacts such as loss or damage.
Robustness is the ability of a system to withstand disturbance without experiencing significant performance degradation. A robust system can absorb and adapt to shocks while maintaining operational continuity.
Rapidity measures recovery time, indicating how quickly the system can return to its previous equilibrium or establish a new stable state.
03
Avalanche defense measures
In the context of avalanche commissions and disaster resilience, avalanche defense measures must be considered . The term avalanche defense measures encompasses the full range of actions available to reduce avalanche risk. These measures can be either temporary or permanent in nature. Furthermore, a distinction is made between active and passive measures.
Note
The classification of avalanche protection measures varies depending on the criterion applied:
Miklau & Sauermoser classify protection measures according to the degree of their physical interaction with the avalanche. In this approach, active measures are structures and interventions that act directly on the snow cover or on the avalanche itself, thereby influencing its formation or course. Passive measures, by contrast, include organizational and administrative arrangements as well as the protection of individual objects; they do not directly interfere with avalanche processes. The geographical approach (e.g., adopted by AINEVA) classifies measures according to their location within the avalanche catchment area. Under this framework, active measures are structures located in the release zone, whose purpose is to prevent avalanche initiation. Passive measures, on the other hand, are interventions situated in the track (runout) zone or deposition zone, designed to deflect, slow down, or stop an avalanche before it reaches vulnerable areas.
The responsibilities of the avalanche commission are limited to active, temporary measures, providing guidance on artificial avalanche triggering, closures, and evacuations (Rudolf-Miklau & Sauermoser, 2011).
With regard to the resilience diagram above, the commissions play a key role in preparedness and mitigation, but little or none in the response or recovery phases. Their primary function is to anticipate the event, enabling other institutions to ensure greater resilience.
Further links and literature:
- Resilience: Theory and Applications by L. Carlson, G. Bassett, W. Buehring, M. Collins, S. Folga, B. Haffenden, F. Petit, J. Phillips, D. Verner, and R. Whitfield Decision and Information Sciences Division, Argonne National Laboratory, January 2012
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Rudolf-Miklau, F. & Sauermoser, S. (2011): Handbook of Technical Avalanche Protection. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn
Cover photo: © Vermiglio (TN)-2009-Protezione Civile PAT | snow institute