Resilience in Complex Catchment Systems
Water Resilient Cities, Institute for Infrastructure and Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Robert L. Wilby, Harriet Orr and Nigel Watson
Water 2021, 13(4), 541; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13040541
Received: 31 December 2020 / Revised: 16 February 2021 / Accepted: 17 February 2021 / Published: 20 February 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Perspectives on River Catchment Resilience)
In this paper, we explore how we can use catchment resilience as a unifying concept to manage and regulate catchments, using structured reviews to support our perspective. Catchments are complex systems with interrelated natural, social, and technical aspects. The exposure, vulnerability, and resilience of these aspects (separately and in combination) are the latent conditions, which, when triggered by a hydrohazard, result in catchment impacts. In complex catchment systems, resilience is the ability to bounce back, the ability to absorb, and the ability to transform. When all three abilities are accounted for, we are forced to consider the interactions of the catchment system. Six main complexity concepts can be used to frame how we approach evaluating catchment resilience. These concepts are: natural-social-technical aspects, interactions, spatial scales, time scales, multiple forms of evidence, and uncertainty. In analysing these complexity concepts, we have found that there are several gaps in current practice. Requirements for future methodological approaches are suggested. Central to any effective approach is the incorporation of a linking systems or interaction analysis, which draws together the natural-social-technical system in a meaningful way. If our approaches do not begin to acknowledge the interdependencies and interactions, we may miss substantial opportunities to enhance catchment resilience.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
resilience; complex systems; catchment
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Beevers, L.; Bedinger, M.; McClymont, K.; Visser-Quinn, A. Resilience in Complex Catchment Systems. Water 2021, 13, 541. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13040541
AMA Style
Beevers L, Bedinger M, McClymont K, Visser-Quinn A. Resilience in Complex Catchment Systems. Water. 2021; 13(4):541. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13040541
Chicago/Turabian StyleBeevers, Lindsay; Bedinger, Melissa; McClymont, Kerri; Visser-Quinn, Annie. 2021. "Resilience in Complex Catchment Systems" Water 13, no. 4: 541. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13040541
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit