Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 19: Social Systems and Group Dynamics
SOE 19.4: Talk
Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 17:45–18:00, H37
Resilience of social-ecological systems — •Steven Lade1,2 and Maja Schlüter1 — 1Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden — 2Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Sweden
`Resilience' is emerging as a key concept that researchers and organisations (including the United Nations) use to understand and deal with many of the problems facing contemporary environment and society. In this talk I provide a brief overview of research on the resilience of social-ecological systems and how physicists could contribute to its future development. First, local stability concepts of nonlinear dynamics are closely linked to the original, resistance to shock conception of resilience. I summarise one recent work in which a recently developed tool of nonlinear dynamics, generalised modelling, has been used to better understand the behaviour of a social-ecological system. Second, and especially recently, the understanding of resilience has expanded to include the ability of a system to adapt and transform in response to threats and challenges, as well as an increased emphasis on the interactions and feedbacks between the social and ecological parts of the system. So far modelling studies have generally not kept pace with these conceptual developments, but as I will outline network perspectives show potential to do so. Brainstorming on other modelling approaches that may meet modern challenges of resilience research will also be most welcome.