Resilience is increasingly considered an essential undercurrent to any effort aimed at fostering individual, community and national health, safety and prosperity. It is often described as the bridge between long-term development investments and humanitarian efforts in response to natural catastrophes and protracted human crises, and requires an analysis of levels of exposure to hazards in order to better understand and respond to social, political, economic and environmental vulnerabilities.  Resilience must be considered in terms of a multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach, with cross-cutting themes, current trends and historical perspective, and input from a highly diverse representation of society.

Communities inherently have some degree of susceptibility to hazards, or vulnerability, and at the heart of this are coping strategies that emerge from high levels of repetitive exposure. This experience results in a familiarity of the risks at hand and cumulative knowledge around ways to avoid, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters.

Common approaches to reduce vulnerability include livelihoods diversification, education, protecting and building assets and investments, and securing access to resources through alternative safety nets, such as credit and insurance.