Building resilience in the face of increasing shocks and stresses

100RC’s City Resilience Framework

“Shocks” such as terrorism, cyber-attacks and disease outbreaks, and “stresses” such as changing demographics, social cohesion and loss of comparative advantage are some of the topmost concerns for Singapore.

To discuss Singapore’s efforts, CLC co-organised a workshop with 100Resilient Cities (100RC) on 4 March, involving stakeholders from the public, private and people sectors. International experts, from Rebuild by Design as well as the Chief Resilience Officers of Melbourne and Bangkok also described their challenges and innovative strategies to improve resilience.

In evaluating Singapore’s key priority areas for resilience using the 100RC City Resilience Framework, participants noted that while physical and environmental “shocks and stresses” such as climate change could be of high impact, such shocks could still largely be managed and mitigated through the use of technology and development of infrastructure and systems. Conversely, the less tangible aspects of social resilience were notably more difficult to manage and develop as societies that were not resilient at the community and individual levels were less likely to be able to deal with and recover rapidly from shocks or stresses.

The workshop concluded that while Singapore has invested much in the infrastructure and systems needed for resilience, our efforts going forward would be in the areas of empowering and engaging a broader range of stakeholders and strengthening the social aspects of resilience which cut across multiple domains.