(by DaChawn Kincaid)
Over the course of my time here at ODU I have been researching the concept of resilience. As my final task I was asked to present my findings and engage in conversation afterwards.
During my presentation I covered a few issues. One of the first of these were simple definitions that all definitions of resilience should relate to in order to be considered true definitions of resilience. The definitions stated that resilience is the ability to recover and grow from difficulty, the ability to harness resources for well-being, the ability to anticipate and weather any type of shock, and never breaking despite exposure. These simple definitions helped me realize that some of the definitions I had been reading were more related to other terms rather than resilience. Next, I explored some of many the different forms of resilience. I spoke on psychological, cultural, ecological, cyber, and coastal resilience. There are many other forms of resilience but I chose to focus on these forms. Along with these forms I provided real life examples in order to help me and my audience better understand these forms of resilience. The last things I discussed was how to measure resilience and why resilience is important in the world of today.
After presenting and further discussion I realized learned that I had left a concept out of my presentation that I would have liked to have explored more. This concept was community resilience. I realized that all the forms of resilience I had discussed not only had an impact on each other but they also had a tremendous impact on community resilience. The example of the raised houses around Virginia had immediately come to mind as an example. Raising these house does make them more resilient to flooding but it makes them easily damageable to wind damage. This will have an impact on the whole community that surrounds these houses.
Presenting my findings and ideas on resilience was intimidating as well as nerve racking. However, I am grateful that I got the opportunity to do this. This will have an impact on the future presentations that I will have to present. I will be better and more comfortable presenting my ideas to professionals and students alike.
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