Community Resilience to Volcanic Hazard Consequences

Central to contemporary emergency management is the use of risk management principles to promote community resilience to a range of potential hazard effects. Realising this goal requires that the community and personal characteristics that facilitate the ability to `bounce back' from adversity are identified and modeled. This paper describes the role of self-efficacy, problem-focused coping, sense of community and age in predicting resilience to the social consequences of volcanic hazard activity following the 1995 and 1996 eruptions at Ruapehu volcano, New Zealand. The nature of the relationships observed suggest that resilience should be conceptualised and managed in a contingent rather than a prescriptive manner. The implications of the findings for community risk perception, predicting resilience within an all-hazards management framework, community hazard reduction planning, resilience assessment and evaluation, and risk communication is discussed.