Dimensions of resiliency: essential resiliency, exceptional recovery and scale

Not only is resiliency a term with a myriad of definitions microscopically specified by a wide variety of social and bio/physical scientists and practitioners, it is also incredibly complicated even when treated by individual academic/government/non-profit and business practitioners who are convinced that they have the perfect definition. By then linking the concepts of infrastructure and community to resiliency, not only does additional complexity emerge but also a powerful imperative to examine the basics necessary to achieve resiliency within these interrelated concepts. The lens of the applied academic observer situated at ‘ground zero’ for not only one but two major catastrophes within a micro minute span of less than five years (Hurricane Katrina and its 2005–2007 relatives and the British Petroleum oil well blow out of 2010, layered on pervasive localised sea level rise due to delta subsidence) is the ‘data’ analysed to support the arguments of this paper about what must be considered with regard to infrastructure and community to even hope to achieve a resilience state: essential resilience, exceptional recovery and serious appreciation for the need for a greater recovery scale.