Comprehensive Resilience Research Articles

Developing urban resilience in Haifa: preparedness to climate change in health and welfare agencies

Abstract Background Extreme climate events (wildfires, floods, heatwaves, cold spells) are becoming more frequent in the Mediterranean, but adaptation levels in the health and welfare sectors remain low. The city of Haifa in northern Israel is prone to both war and extreme climate events. Focusing on Haifa, we aim to 1) examine local officials' risk perceptions of different extreme events, 2) compare preparedness to war vs. climate events, and 3) conduct a spatial analysis of climate and health vulnerabilities. Methods Mixed-Methods: a qualitative component including 30 in-depth interviews with local government health and welfare officials, and a qualitative component that includes mapping vulnerability indicators such as socio-economic status, recipients of welfare allowances, and temperature, focusing on urban heat islands. Results The city of Haifa developed a comprehensive resilience policy for war and wildfire. However, there is no awareness or preparedness for other climate events that have not yet been experienced. Similarly, hospitals are prepared for emergencies, but not for extreme climate events. There are no national budget or guidelines for climate adaptation at the city level or in hospitals. Correspondingly, risk perceptions of climate change among health and welfare officials remain low. At the city level, social and climatic vulnerabilities are correlated, so that downtown neighborhoods are characterized by poorer socio-economic, health and welfare conditions, and higher summer temperatures. Conclusions Haifa has good preparedness for events that had been experienced in the past. While emergency preparedness provides a good infrastructure for climate change preparedness, awareness and adaptation to the unique aspects of climate change preparations are needed, including reference to related spatial dimensions. Identifying the gaps between preparedness to various emergency events, can contribute to better climate change preparedness at the local level. Key messages In the city of Haifa, emergency preparedness exists but is not extended to extreme climate events, and awareness to health risks of climate change remains low in the health and welfare agencies. Learning from emergency preparedness to wars, wildfires and earthquakes may contribute to enhancing preparedness to extreme climate events at the local level.

Evolutionary resilience in the housing sector: requirements proposal

Purpose This paper aims to discuss how to apply the evolutionary resilience theory in the housing sector, aiming to develop an alternative resilience framework for planning social housing programmes. Design/methodology/approach Based on the literature review, it was developed a theoretical framework for building evolutionary resilience. Based on this framework, the outline for the empirical research was specified through interviews with 21 multidisciplinary experts. The statements of these experts were examined through content analysis, as a means to assign a set of requirements for resilient buildings. Findings The analysis showed that the holistic framework based on evolutionary resilience could constitute a comprehensive and innovative resilience approach. The main contribution of the set of requirements was to adapt theoretical concepts by proposing operational surrogates, enabling such knowledge to be more applicable to devising resilience to the housing sector. Originality/value Resilience is establishing itself as one of the top agendas on the built environment. The construction sector, however, has yet to embrace the concept and little research has been conducted on a practical approach to assess the building’s resilience. This paper presents a list of practical requirements showing that the housing sector must to build differently to have a resilient future.

System diversification and grazing management as resilience-enhancing agricultural practices: The case of crop-livestock integration

Managing for resilience in agriculture will be required to overcome future challenges such as growing food demand, climatic uncertainty, scarce raw materials and economic instability. Identifying resilience-enhancing practices is therefore fundamental for developing sustainable agroecosystems. We aimed to assess the resilience of two agricultural systems with different levels of diversification in southern Brazil: a specialized soybean (Glycine max) system and an integrated soybean-beef cattle system. We assessed the robustness and the adaptive capacity of these systems when facing climate hazards and price volatility. The study was based on a long-term trial that has been carried out since 2001, composed of an annual rotation of no-till soybean production during the summer and grazing of mixed black oat (Avena strigosa) and Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) pasture in the winter. Treatments consisted of four grazing intensities in the integrated crop-livestock system (ICLS), defined by sward heights: 10, 20, 30 and 40 cm plus an ungrazed control representing the specialized cropping system (CS). The experiment was carried out using a randomized complete block design with three replicates. We analysed system results over five years using two methods: i) a downside risk analysis to estimate the expected losses of yield and gross value added; and ii) the Ecological Network Analysis, which was applied to each treatment and year, for the assessment of the resilience of nitrogen (N-Ɍflow) and phosphorus (P-Ɍflow) flows. Both methods showed that co-located crop-livestock production in an ICLS was more resilient than the specialized soybean system and had improved nutrient cycling and resource-use efficiency. The effects of grazing management on system resilience depended on the output: beef yields were more stable under lower grazing intensities, but the risk of falling below a target economic threshold was inversely proportional to grazing intensity and null when the highest grazing intensity was adopted. The ecological network analysis did not reveal differences in resilience of nutrient flows among grazing management treatments. Our study suggests that Ɍflow (N or P) is a useful proxy for assessing the robustness and adaptability of agroecosystems. Our comprehensive resilience analysis of nutrient and economic flows provides evidence that system diversification through the integration of grazing animals into specialized cropping systems is a good strategy towards the sustainable intensification of agriculture. It would be relevant, however, to consider further studies comparing more complex system configurations and levels of diversification.

Vulnerability of European Union Economies in Agro Trade

The European Union (EU) is characterized by a high level of openness to trade, consequently increasing its member countries’ vulnerability to external shocks coming from the rapidly changing global environment. The paper’s objective was to compare and evaluate the factors of the EU agribusiness, its vulnerability and its measurement tools, and consequently to create subgroupings within EU member countries with different levels of vulnerability to exogenous shocks. The study hypothesized that the EU is not a homogenous unit regarding its trade sensitivity and vulnerability. It analyzed this phenomenon using data of recognized international institutions. Its method was a multi-criteria analysis with summative scaling. The assessment of the analysis was provided by the linear aggregation of 19 relevant vulnerability-influencing parameters, including climate change risk and political stability. The study results confirmed the hypothesis of the EU heterogeneity and identified four groups of member countries with different levels of the vulnerability to global shocks. It can improve an understanding of the agrarian sector position within the EU economy and a more precise re-formulation of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) priorities under the new conditions requiring the comprehensive resilience of the sector.

Building resilient oncologists: A feasibility study of a resiliency curriculum for hematology oncology fellows.

TPS11043 Background: Rates of burnout and career dissatisfaction have declined slightly, but remain high among oncologists (Berg, AMA 2020). As hematology oncology fellows prepare to join this workforce, the ACGME now mandates wellness be a part of their training curriculum. Yet, there are few, if any, structured and effective programs specifically for these trainees. Based on feedback from our prior mindfulness-based wellness curriculum, we created a more varied and comprehensive resiliency program with the use of our institutional resources to incorporate and evaluate as part of our fellowship curriculum (ASCO, Abstract 10508), and potentially expand to other fellowships. Methods: This is a single-center, non-randomized, pilot project to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of a resiliency training program. All hematology oncology fellows at our institution were eligible for enrollment, and participation was voluntary. A total of seven monthly, 1 hour sessions were conducted through the academic year. Each session focused on a particular topic - alternative forms of wellness through art and music, self care, mindfulness and stretching, reflective writing, and healthy boundaries and work life integration - which have all been studied individually in wellness and burnout with positive results. Sessions were co-led by a peer and “expert” guest speakers from our training institution. Participants completed questionnaires pre and post-program, and feedback evaluations after each session. Questionnaires included the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Connor Davidson Resiliency Scale (CDRS-10), and modified Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), as well as demographics and open response questions. The primary aim was feasibility (enrollment, completion, and compliance rates), and the secondary aim was acceptability (usefulness of the intervention). Examination of stress, mindfulness, resiliency, and burnout were exploratory. Enrollment and data collection are complete, with 18 of 29 (62%) eligible participants consented. Data analysis is in process.

The Contribution of NBS to Urban Resilience in Stormwater Management and Control: A Framework with Stakeholder Validation

Urban waters represent a crucial component for the enhancement of urban resilience due to their importance in cities. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged as sustainable solutions to contribute to urban resilience in order to meet the challenges of climate change. In order to promote the use of NBS for increasing urban resilience, tools that demonstrate the value of this type of solutions over the long-term are required. A performance assessment system provides an adequate basis for demonstrating this value, as well as for diagnosing the current city situation, selecting and monitoring the implementation of solutions. Regarding NBS management, some assessment approaches have been published, focusing on assessing the effectiveness of NBS in the face of climate change and supporting their design and impact assessment. Nevertheless, an integrated approach to assess the NBS contribution for urban resilience has not been published. This paper presents a comprehensive resilience assessment framework (RAF) to evaluate the NBS contribution for urban resilience, focused on solutions for stormwater management and control. Furthermore, details on stakeholders’ validation, with focus on the metrics’ relevance and applicability to cities, is also presented.

Resilient housing system strategies: Baghdad governorate as a model

The housing sector needs start adopting effective strategies to develop the housing system and increase its resilience of economic crises. The concept of resilience as a comprehensive term for planning strategies provides assistance to help cities develop their capacity to meet challenges in meeting housing needs. Over the coming decades, capacity building will be needed for more resilience in cities developing strategies to deal with crises and shocks and developing their housing system. The research attempts to shed light on the concept “the resilience of the housing system” and how to achieve it as a new method to address the housing deficient. The research found that comprehensive resilience strategies are more capable of creating a dynamic and interactive housing system among its components to address the imbalances that accompanied the housing system in Iraq in the previous period, the research aims at developing housing strategies to increase the resilience of the housing system of Baghdad governorate through quantitative analysis of the housing reality of the study area and identify the strategies necessary to increase the resilience of the housing system and develop its capacity to meet future housing needs.

A Framework of Simulation and Gaming for Enhancing Community Resilience Against Large-Scale Earthquakes: Application for Achievements in Japan

Background. The significance of mutual-help in communities for disaster management is a fundamental important concept. However, the current societal state does not reflect this lesson. S&G (Simulation and Gaming) has the potential to overcome the challenges faced in promoting community-based disaster management. No scientific research is currently present that reviews their achievements in Japan. Aim. This paper analyzes the current achievements of S&G in enhancing community resilience against large-scale earthquakes in Japan. Method. The paper clarifies the theoretical advantages of S&G in enhancing community resilience in coping and adaptive capacity plus proposes a conceptual contribution framework of S&G in improving community resilience. Based on this framework, the paper analyzes some major games that tackle community resilience against earthquakes in Japan. Results. The paper demonstrates the achievements through the S&G spectrum that stresses the disastrous experience with specific resilience views on one side, while decision making for critical reflection from other players with more comprehensive resilience views on the other side. Conclusion. The paper showcases the current S&G achievements in enhancing community resilience against large-scale earthquakes in Japan using the proposed framework, which can be utilized by other disaster-prone countries to develop and evaluate applications of S&G for increasing community resilience against earthquakes.

Comprehensive resilience assessment of electricity supply security for 140 countries

Abstract Indicator-based approaches are suitable to assess multi-dimensional problems. In order to compare a set of alternatives, one strategy is to normalize individual indicators to a common scale and aggregate them into a comprehensive score. This study proposes the Electricity Supply Resilience Index (ESRI), which is a measure of a nation’s electricity supply resilience. Starting from an initial set of individual indicators derived through a structured selection process, the ESRI is calculated for 140 countries worldwide. To account for robustness of the resulting resilience index, 38 combinations of eight normalization methods and six aggregation functions were considered. Results show a clear country ranking trend, with robust top- and low-performing countries across all combinations. However, the ranking disparity becomes large for average performing countries, especially if their indicators show high variability. Furthermore, the differences of the rankings are quantified through the Rank Difference Measure (RDM), which identifies the categorical scales and the minimum aggregator as the most different ones. Finally, the effects of different compensation levels of the aggregation functions are discussed. The findings of the present study aim to provide recommendations for policymakers on how composite indexes results depend on assumptions and chosen approaches.

A Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale for the South African Navy

Resilience constructs and measures in the military context are of particular interest because of their association with general performance and mental health outcomes. However, in spite of the reported advantages, the use of resilience assessment models faces two challenges: firstly, measurement and, secondly, operational application within the military environment. This article aimed to provide preliminary validation for a Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale (BSRS) for use in the South African Navy (SAN) in order to discuss its operational application for individuals and groups. The study used a sample of active-duty SAN sailors, distributed throughout the fleet. Participants (N = 1312) completed the BSRS, together with established measures of resiliency and emotional regulation, and also provided socio-demographic information. The psychometric structure of the scale was examined, firstly, through confirmatory factor analysis within structural equation modelling, and secondly socio-demographic effects and construct validity were also explored. The model yielded acceptable fit and high internal consistency. Furthermore, the results support the construct validity of the scale. The data appear to support the contention that comprehensive resilience screening measures, while still brief and time-effective, could be employed to the benefit of navy personnel. This would facilitate a ‘screen-and-stream’ approach which allows military mental health practitioners (1) to screen military personnel comprehensively and (2) to identify and stream quickly those whose resilience appears to be compromised for further assessment and targeted intervention by appropriate support providers.

Toward quantification of seismic resilience in Iran: Developing an integrated indicator system

In the recent years, the concept of resilience against natural hazards has been developed significantly. Considering the fact that the term of seismic resilience can describe the quality of the urban fabrics to respond and recover after occurrence of a seismic event and existence of required infrastructures for effective adaption; enormous efforts have been paid to the quantification and proposal of comprehensive resilience frameworks. Although there are precious achievements in the literature toward the provision of theoretical background for calculation of resilience as a time dependent vulnerability function; the lack of reliable data to verify these models persuade researchers to the application of indicator systems using descriptors to measure different dimensions of resilience. In this paper, a new indicator system is proposed to quantify the seismic resilience in urban areas focusing on the specific challenges to which the developing countries such as Iran are faced. An AHP based approach has been conducted to identify the most important factors that must be included in the model, as well as, their relative contributions through weighting process. The model utilizing 37 indicators, 13 thematic areas and 5 sectors has been developed and examined by implementation in two selected case studies from metropolitan of Tehran and Kish Island in Persian Gulf. The new model has been verified by comparing its ability to reproduce logical quantified resilience values calculated by an already-developed simple model in the literature. The results confirm the potential engagement of quantitative resilience evaluation as a practical step in the context of integrated disaster risk management.

Landslides-oriented urban disaster resilience assessment—A case study in ShenZhen, China

With the increasing expansion of cities associated with rapid urbanization, the ecological environment is being severely damaged, exposing cities to frequent extreme weather events. Urban ecological ecosystems are under great threat. Research on urban disaster resilience is conducive to a better understanding of disaster prevention and mitigation capacity, and provides valuable references for resilient city construction. In this study, a typical city under rapid urbanization in China – Shenzhen – was chosen as the research area, including the city's 57 sub-districts. Urban disaster resilience to rainfall-induced landslides was conceptually framed into the dimensions of physical resilience and social resilience. Support vector machine (SVM) was applied to evaluate the physical resilience and a Delphi-analytic hierarchy process (Delphi-AHP) model was used to assess social resilience on a sub-district scale in 2016. The results show that the physical resilience and social resilience of Shenzhen demonstrate obvious spatial concentration trends. Areas with low physical resilience were located in sub-districts of Dapeng New District with intense rainfall and complex topography, as well as those in Guangming New District with lateritic red earth derived from arenaceous shale. Areas with low social resilience were mainly located in eastern Shenzhen, including sub-districts in Longgang District and Dapeng New District, with undeveloped economy, inadequate infrastructures and many vulnerable people. All sub-districts in the three districts of Pingshan New District, Dapeng New District and Guangming New District need attention because of their low comprehensive resilience. Comparison of the physical resilience and social resilience indicated that the performance of physical resilience was significantly better than that of social resilience; only 26% of the sub-districts of Shenzhen had a higher level of social resilience than of physical resilience. Therefore, the government should strengthen urban management of social services and physical infrastructure provision to improve social resilience to cope with urban disasters.

Resilience to Cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas—A Multisectorial Approach Focusing on Water—The RESCCUE Project

The RESCCUE Project is an H2020 research project that aims to help cities around the world to become more resilient to physical, social, and economic challenges, using the water sector as the central point of the approach. RESCCUE will generate models and tools to bring this objective to practice, while delivering a framework enabling city resilience assessment, planning and management. This will be achieved by integrating software tools, methods, and new knowledge related to the detailed urban services performance into novel and promising loosely coupled models (integrated models), multi-risk assessment method, and a comprehensive resilience platform. These tools will allow urban resilience assessment from a multisectorial approach, for current and future climate change scenarios, including multiple hazards and cascading effects. The RESCCUE approach will be implemented in three EU cities (Barcelona, Bristol, and Lisbon) and, with the support of UN-Habitat, disseminate their results among other cities belonging to major international networks. The aim of this paper is to present the main goals of this project, as well as the approach followed and the main expected results after the four years of implementation, so other cities around the world can use the RESCCUE approach to increase their resilience.

Morphology Dependent Assessment of Resilience for Urban Areas

The formation of new threats and the increasing complexity of urban built infrastructures underline the need for more robust and sustainable systems, which are able to cope with adverse events. Achieving sustainability requires the strengthening of resilience. Currently, a comprehensive approach for the quantification of resilience of urban infrastructure is missing. Within this paper, a new generalized mathematical framework is presented. A clear definition of terms and their interaction builds the basis of this resilience assessment scheme. Classical risk-based as well as additional components are aligned along the timeline before, during and after disruptive events, to quantify the susceptibility, the vulnerability and the response and recovery behavior of complex systems for multiple threat scenarios. The approach allows the evaluation of complete urban surroundings and enables a quantitative comparison with other development plans or cities. A comprehensive resilience framework should cover at least preparation, prevention, protection, response and recovery. The presented approach determines respective indicators and provides decision support, which enhancement measures are more effective. Hence, the framework quantifies for instance, if it is better to avoid a hazardous event or to tolerate an event with an increased robustness. An application example is given to assess different urban forms, i.e., morphologies, with consideration of multiple adverse events, like terrorist attacks or earthquakes, and multiple buildings. Each urban object includes a certain number of attributes, like the object use, the construction type, the time-dependent number of persons and the value, to derive different performance targets. The assessment results in the identification of weak spots with respect to single resilience indicators. Based on the generalized mathematical formulation and suitable combination of indicators, this approach can quantify the resilience of urban morphologies, independent of possible single threat types and threat locations.

Development and Effect of Resilience Promotion Program on Cancer Patient

The objective of this study is to develop a comprehensive resilience program and measure the effects of the program. The components of program were identified in the areas of knowledge of cancer treatment, attitude for resilience, and skills for resilience improvement. After developed, the program was applied to 22 cancer patients at the regional cancer center. To evaluate the program effects, pre- and post- program social support, resilience, and quality of life were carefully examined. The results were the level of social support (t=2.97, p=.0073) and resilience (t=2.32, p=.031) were increased in the post-program compared to pre-program, and there is statistically significant difference. The physical function (t=2.89, p=.009), among the quality of life, was increased, and nausea and vomiting were decreased (t=-2.22 p=.038). In conclusion, this program was applied to cancer patients in community and it was found that social support and coping ability were significantly improved. However, it was confirmed that the quality of life was significantly improved only in physical function, nausea and vomiting symptoms.

Tolerating Soft Errors in Processor Cores Using CLEAR (Cross-Layer Exploration for Architecting Resilience)

We present CLEAR (Cross-Layer Exploration for Architecting Resilience), a first of its kind framework which overcomes a major challenge in the design of digital systems that are resilient to reliability failures: achieve desired resilience targets at minimal costs (energy, power, execution time, area) by combining resilience techniques across various layers of the system stack (circuit, logic, architecture, software, algorithm). This is also referred to as cross-layer resilience. In this paper, we focus on radiation-induced soft errors in processor cores. We address both single-event upsets (SEUs) and single-event multiple upsets (SEMUs) in terrestrial environments. Our framework automatically and systematically explores the large space of comprehensive resilience techniques and their combinations across various layers of the system stack (586 cross-layer combinations in this paper), derives cost-effective solutions that achieve resilience targets at minimal costs, and provides guidelines for the design of new resilience techniques. Our results demonstrate that a carefully optimized combination of circuit-level hardening, logic-level parity checking, and micro-architectural recovery provides a highly cost-effective soft error resilience solution for general-purpose processor cores. For example, a 50x improvement in silent data corruption rate is achieved at only 2.1% energy cost for an out-of-order core (6.1% for an in-order core) with no speed impact. However, (application-aware) selective circuit-level hardening alone, guided by a thorough analysis of the effects of soft errors on application benchmarks, provides a cost-effective soft error resilience solution as well (with ~1% additional energy cost for a 50x improvement in silent data corruption rate).

Development of a framework for resilience measurement: Suggestion of fuzzy Resilience Grade (RG) and fuzzy Resilience Early Warning Grade (REWG).

Resilience engineering (RE) can be an alternative technique to the traditional risk assessment and management techniques, to predict and manage safety conditions of modern socio-technical organizations. While traditional risk management approaches are retrospective and highlight error calculation and computation of malfunction possibilities, resilience engineering seeks ways to improve capacity at all levels of organizations in order to build strong yet flexible processes. Considering the resilience potential measurement as a concern in complex working systems, the aim of this study was to quantify the resilience by the help of fuzzy sets and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques. In this paper, we adopted the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) method to measure resilience in a gas refinery plant. A resilience assessment framework containing six indicators, each with its own sub-indicators, was constructed. Then, the fuzzy weights of the indicators and the sub-indicators were derived from pair-wise comparisons conducted by experts. The fuzzy evaluating vectors of the indicators and the sub-indicators computed according to the initial assessment data. Finally, the Comprehensive Resilience Index (CoRI), Resilience Grade (RG), and Resilience Early Warning Grade (REWG) were established. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, an illustrative example in a gas refinery complex (an instance of socio-technical systems) was provided. CoRI of the refinery ranked as "III". In addition, for the six main indicators, RG and REWG ranked as "III" and "NEWZ", respectively, except for C3, in which RG ranked as "II", and REWG ranked as "OEWZ". The results revealed the engineering practicability and usefulness of the proposed method in resilience evaluation of socio-technical systems.

Resilience Analysis of Countries under Disasters Based on Multisource Data.

Disasters occur almost daily in the world. Because emergencies frequently have no precedent, are highly uncertain, and can be very destructive, improving a country's resilience is an efficient way to reduce risk. In this article, we collected more than 20,000 historical data points from disasters from 207 countries to enable us to calculate the severity of disasters and the danger they pose to countries. In addition, 6 primary indices (disaster, personal attribute, infrastructure, economics, education, and occupation) including 38 secondary influencing factors are considered in analyzing the resilience of countries. Using these data, we obtained the danger, expected number of deaths, and resilience of all 207 countries. We found that a country covering a large area is more likely to have a low resilience score. Through sensitivity analysis of all secondary indices, we found that population density, frequency of disasters, and GDP are the three most critical factors affecting resilience. Based on broad-spectrum resilience analysis of the different continents, Oceania and South America have the highest resilience, while Asia has the lowest. Over the past 50 years, the resilience of many countries has been improved sharply, especially in developing countries. Based on our results, we analyze the comprehensive resilience and provide some optimal suggestions to efficiently improve resilience.

Developing a multi-scale modeling system for resilience assessment of green-grey drainage infrastructures under climate change and sea level rise impact

Multi-scale modeling analysis is often required for comprehensive resilience assessment of urban drainage infrastructures to account for global climate change impact and local watershed response. The goal of this study was to develop a multi-scale modeling platform for drainage infrastructure resilience assessment in a coastal watershed. The model employs scale-dependent informatics, including hydroinformatics, climate informatics, and geoinformatics, to support a comprehensive hydrodynamic stormwater and hydrologic model, called the Interconnected Channel and Pond Routing Model. Low Impact Development (LID), deemed as green drainage infrastructure, was adopted and assessed in the Cross Bayou Watershed, Florida. The Cross Bayou Canal is the grey infrastructure, which dissects the watershed and connects both Tampa Bay and Boca Ciega Bay on its northeastern and southwestern ends, respectively. Modeling scenarios are driven by watershed-scale rainfall/runoff, coastal high tide, and global sea level rise, respectively or collectively, to evaluate the green-grey drainage infrastructure system in response to current and future coastal flood hazards predicted for year 2030. The quantitative resilience metrics, such as peak inflow reduction at flood zone, were chosen to reflect storms that pose threats to the watershed, now and in the future year 2030, for climate change scenarios derived by the Statistical Downscaling Model. Results indicate that the effectiveness of LID depends on the rainfall type being considered, such as convective storm versus frontal rain, and sub-daily rainfall patterns, as well as a groundwater table analysis.

From victim to victor: The development of the BASIC PH model of coping and resiliency.

This article summarizes my personal journey in the field of trauma starting in 1975 and tries to trace its “origin” in my early life experiences. It mostly focuses on my field experience as a pioneer professional (academician and practitioner) in a rural area of Israel in the late 70s and early 80s. In this personal and professional encounter with the harsh reality of a community living under constant threat of shelling and of terrorists’ infiltration, I realized there was a huge gap between my clinical training and the real life of these people who were forced to cope with this situation for years. This has led to one of the first attempts worldwide to research and develop an integrative model of coping and resiliency. The results yielded a new model: the BASIC Ph Model. This model builds on an understanding of the community impacted and the ability of the inhabitants to withstand disasters and crisis and led to the development of one of the first comprehensive resiliency programs. Among other things, the program using the BASIC Ph Model ensured that there would be a professional role of Emergency Behavioral Officer(s) with the job of enhancing trauma resilience city-wide. A diagram and table are presented and discussed to help to explain the elements and approaches covered in the BASIC Ph Model. The latter section of the article discusses the cross-sectional studies of the model and recent developments in its many uses.