Building Resilience brings together contributions from the 2011 Conference of the International
Institute for Infrastructure Renewal and Reconstruction, held at Kandalama, Sri Lanka, 19th – 21st
July 2011. It includes 109 abstracts by scholars and practioners around the world. The full papers are
available on an accompanying USB drive.
With growing population and infrastructures, the world’s exposure to hazards – of natural and
man-made origin – is inevitably increasing. This reality reinforces the need to proactively consider
disaster risk as a part of the sustainable development agenda. The International Conference on
Building Resilience will encourage debate on individual, institutional and societal coping strategies
to address the challenges associated with disaster risk. Central to these strategies is the concept of
resilience, which is becoming a core concept in the social and physical sciences, and also in matters
of public policy. Resilience refers to the capability and capacity of systems to withstand change. By
encouraging participation from researchers in the social and physical sciences, the conference will
explore inter-disciplinary strategies that develop the capacity of a system, community or society
potentially exposed to disaster related hazards, to adapt, by resisting or changing, in order to reach
and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure.
The conference outcomes will be used to support the 2010-2011 World Disaster Reduction
Campaign ‘Making Cities Resilient’, which addresses issues of local governance and urban risk while
drawing upon previous ISDR Campaigns on safer schools and hospitals, as well as on the sustainable
urbanizations principles developed in the UN-Habitat World Urban Campaign 2009-2013. Mayors
and their local governments are both the key targets and drivers of the campaign. The overall target of
the Campaign is to get as many local governments ready as possible, to span a global network of fully
engaged cities of different sizes, characteristics, risk profiles and locations. The campaign is focusing
on raising political commitment to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation among
local governments and mayors; including through high profile media and public awareness activities
