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Resilient urban systems:
a socio-technical study of community scale climate change adaptation initiatives
6. Research outcomes
This pilot research has demonstrated that enabling resilience in new community developments in Victoria
requires new techniques and approaches to achieve resilience in the context of socio-technical systems
with complex interdependent qualities. As Adger (2003) states:
“Adaptation processes involve the interdependence of agents through their relationships with each other,
with the institutions in which they reside, and with the resource base on which they depend”.
As a preliminary step towards these potential new techniques and approaches, this project provides three
key outcomes:
1. A set of technical, institutional and social enablers of resilience;
2. Key findings regarding resilient energy and water systems for residential developments; and
3. Preliminary criteria for the assessment of resilient urban systems.
6.1
Enablers of resilience
The energy and water systems at Aurora and WestWyck exhibit multiple social, technical and institutional
enablers that contribute to system resilience by helping to alleviate or avoid most of the key disturbances to
system functions, such as drought, heatwave, blackouts and bushfire. The principal enablers of resilience
identified through this process are summarised below.