This paper by Professor Rowena Hill argues that “societal resilience” and “community resilience” are increasingly used interchangeably, despite meaning different things — creating confusion that undermines the UK’s whole-of-society approach to risk.
Societal resilience is the wider concept: keeping core national functions running (government, energy, transport, communications) during a crisis — essentially a systems view. Community resilience is about the resilience of groups — the people within those systems, bound by trust, identity and social capital, not passive recipients of services.
Hill argues existing resilience frameworks (like NATO’s seven societal resilience benchmarks) miss a crucial eighth element: community. Without it, efforts risk supporting infrastructure while ignoring the people who determine whether it actually works.
Her conclusion: community resilience should be recognised as central to societal resilience, since communities are its ultimate users and purpose. Clarity between the two terms is essential for effective, coordinated resilience work.
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