Building community resilience through cross‐sector partnerships and interdisciplinary research

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• Author: Yue “Gurt” Ge,Naim Kapucu,Christopher W. Zobel,Samiul Hasan,Jeremy L. Hall,Haizhong Wang,Liqiang Wang,Yago Martín,Michelle Cechowski
• Date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13697

VIEWPOINT

Building community resilience through cross-sector

partnerships and interdisciplinary research

Yue “Gurt”Ge

1

| Naim Kapucu

1

| Christopher W. Zobel

2

| Samiul Hasan

3

|

Jeremy L. Hall

1

| Haizhong Wang

4

| Liqiang Wang

5

| Yago Martín

6

|

Michelle Cechowski

7

1

School of Public Administration, University of

Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

2

Department of Business Information

Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and

State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

3

Department of Civil, Environmental, &

Construction Engineering, University of Central

Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

4

School of Civil & Construction Engineering,

Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

5

Department of Computer Science, University of

Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

6

Departamento de Geografía, Historia y Filosofía,

Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain

7

East Central Florida Regional Planning Council,

Orlando, Florida, USA

Correspondence

Yue “Gurt”Ge, School of Public Administration,

Universityof Central Florida, 528 W LivingstonSt,

Suite 446,Orlando, FL 32801, USA.

Email: yue.ge@ucf.edu

Abstract

Building community resilience has become a national imperative. Substantial

uncertainties in dynamic environments of emergencies and crises require real-time

information collection and dissemination based on big data analytics. These, in

turn, require networked communities and cross-sector partnerships to build last-

ing resilience. This viewpoint article highlights an interdisciplinary approach to

building community resilience through community-engaged research and partner-

ships. This perspective leverages existing community partnerships and network

resources, undertakes an all-hazard and whole-community approach, and evalu-

ates the use of state-of-the-art information communication technologies. In doing

so, it reinforces the multifaceted intergovernmental and cross-sector networks

through which resilience can be developed and sustained.

Evidence for practice

•Local communities can benefit from resources aggregated from different sectors

and academia to enhance their capacity to plan, prepare for, and respond to

emergencies.

•Interdisciplinary collaboration with community partners and stakeholders can

help build community resilience in dealing with all hazards and public

emergencies.

•Recent technological advancements can help improve real-time data collection

and information sharing for networked and connected communities.

INTRODUCTION

As the scale and intensity of disasters continue to increase,

building community resilience to all hazards has become a

“national imperative”(NAS, 2012). This imperative highlights

the need to build community capacity and coalitions, as well

as to promote partnerships and networks across all levels of

government, academia, and nonprofit and private sectors,

to collectively respond to disasters and thus improve resil-

ience (NRC, 2011). Community resilience is a shared respon-

sibility among all sectors. It is critical for allowing a

community to function during and after a crisis event, and it

requires leveraging adaptive capacities built by partnerships

and intra-community networks (Bloomfield, 2006). Techno-

logical advances in the big data era have enabled more

effective preparedness for, and timely responses to, the

adverse impacts of natural and manmade disasters. How-

ever, decision and policy making for community resilience,

as a complex socio-technical process, are often subject to

short decision horizons within which collective and collabo-

rative data collection, validation, and dissemination must

take place. Modern technological capabilities coupled with

an open governance partnership offers the potential for

such decisions to be made more rationally (rather than intui-

tively) within the constraints of an emergency or a disaster.

For this viewpoint article, community resilience is consid-

ered as a function of a community’s adaptive governance,

which helps develop community capacity through adaptive

management, continuous learning, and coalition building

(Comfort et al., 2010;Kapucuetal.,2013). In this era of

reduced-boundary governance (Hall & Battaglio, 2018a), col-

laborative and adaptive forms of network governance, as a

Received: 14 April 2022 Revised: 11 July 2023 Accepted: 12 July 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13697

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1415–1422. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. 1415