Session 2

Thought Leader for Session 2 – Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine,
Executive Director of the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Session Title: Adaptive capacity – a key enabler for resilience

Session Focus:

Engineered Resilience and social acceptance
How to organize resilience and still have the society accepting it?
What makes people supportive for resilience-enhancers?
Where is the borderline between enhanced socio-technical resilience and the demand for privacy and liberty?

Abstract:

Resilience stories are written by people. If we look at natural disasters, terror attacks or major accidents, it is the creativity, flexibility and talent to improvise that allows people to thrive even when faced with unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances. This is resilience at its best and it only shows when verything is at stake. Nevertheless, this kind of successfully coping with adversity can be systematically exercised, trained and learned before events actually happen. There is a multitude of possible ways to enhance people’s resilience. Within this session, different solutions to increase societal resilience will be discussed with respect to their applicability and usefulness.

Session Summary:

In each session there will be a composition of different actors and representatives on stage mirroring this broad approach. As a kick-off, a thought leader in the field will give an overview of the state-of-the-art in the field and show examples of projects, applications and concepts that demonstrate the capabilities of respective approaches.
This kick-off will be followed by a panel discussion of resilience experts, who represent different groups of stakeholders. Intending to offer the audience insight into the perspective of not only academia and research, the panel will include experts from the private sector and resilience practicioners.