Insights

Lord Kelvin famously stated: 'What is not defined cannot be measured. What is not measured, cannot be improved. This principle presents an immediate challenge for resilience. Despite extensive attempts to define resilience across risk management, disaster studies, security and adaptation, its meaning remains widely contested. The term is used across disciplines, sectors, and professional communities, often carrying differing assumptions about scope, purpose and approach.

Several institutional definitions can be used to illustrate the semantic diversity of the varying definitions of resilience.

Additionally, the term resilience is often prefixed differently - 'organisational', 'operational', 'business', 'societal', 'communal' - all aiming to differentiate types of resilience yet revealing a foundational challenge. The difficulty lies not in achieving a single agreed upon definition, but in establishing a shared conceptual language. Even when definitions appear aligned, interpretations can vary in application and intent.

Academic literature reinforces this ambiguity - resilience, like beauty, may lie in the eye of the beholder, with a highly subjective nature. Other frameworks emphasise resilience as a dynamic interaction between systems and environments (Pearson et al, 2025). Linkov (2016) frames resilience as the capacity to recover quickly from disruptions - similar notions of 'bounce-back ability' reiterate the sentiment of interpretation. These perspectives are not contradictory, but partial - each captures a facet of a broader, more complex construct.

However, rather than attempting to resolve definitional differences, it may be more useful to understand how resilience is conceptualised in practice. Three broad prospectives can be identified:   

• Aspirational – Resilience is framed as an ‘ideal state’ or strategic ambition. It represents the capacity to not merely withstand disruption but is considered as the ability to thrive amid uncertainty, volatility and change.
   
• Philosophical – Resilience is treated as a paradigm-shaping concept, promoting deeper enquiry questions about how exactly systems adapt and evolve under stress.
   
• Practical – Resilience is understood as an operational capability, embedded in frameworks, standards, and measured with KPIs, audits and maturity models.

These lenses are not mutually exclusive. The various definitions share a temporal logic, one that simply is viewed from several lenses. Rather than unpicking differences of terms, we may find more benefit in understanding the approach and lens one uses to explore resilience. The three broad prospectives therefore do not reflect conceptual confusion but are indicative of resilience's fundamentally interdisciplinary nature.

Resilience is inherently subjective - it may mean different things to different actors, play out in different sectors or systems in seemingly paradoxical ways. But this variability does not compromise its usefulness. The variation lies not in what resilience is, but in how it is approached, prioritised and applied.

If we apply this to Lord Kelvin's observation, multiplicity of definitions does not prevent measurement, it reframes it. It reveals that resilience must be measured relative to the context and purpose it is within. When trying to discuss this on a global stage, the challenge is not to force a singular definition, but to identify shared principles which enable meaningful comparison, application and improvement.

The Resilience World Nexus (RWN) adopts this approach, encouraging collaboration in building resilience, acknowledging that this manifests across organisations, sectors and societies. At the Summit, we focus on what resilience seeks to achieve, by connecting those who think about it in similar ways, rather than rigid agreement on terminology.

Resilience evolves alongside the impacts of climate change, technological development and societal expectations. Resilience is not weakened by this diversity of definition but strengthened by its ability to adapt. By bringing together leaders who reflect these various approaches, our discussions enable a focus on resilience through its core aims; anticipating disruption, absorbing shocks, adapting to change in the face of uncertainty.

Effective discourse can be grounded in shared purpose, yet open to multiple interpretations.

Holding this belief, the RWN encourages a commitment to working towards what resilience seeks to achieve, and what we can do to attain that. If the industry cannot come to consensus, it would not have been worth defining in the first place - in Lord Kelvin's approach: absolute zero.

Linkov, IRGC (2016). Resource Guide on Resilience. Lausanne: EPFL International Risk Governance Center. v29-07-2016   

Pearson, E., Sharp, L., & Hampton, L. (2025). Resilience in context: a synthesis of theories and practices for educational psychologists. Educational Psychology in Practice, 41(4), 439-456.

This article was authored by the Resilience World Nexus Summit (RWN) team.