When disaster strikes, a community’s resilience is put to the test. Whether the cause is natural, political, man-made, or technological, Courtney Page-Tan works to understand how communities can withstand, recover from, and even thrive amid and after disasters.
Her interest in community resilience can be traced back to a single moment, one the entire world witnessed: the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated parts of Asia.
“That event catalyzed my interest in how we can build community resilience and potentially address the resilience inequities that exist in some of our most vulnerable communities,” Page-Tan explains.
She says—now more than ever—it’s critical to build community resilience because of increasing and new threats due to climate change.
“If we can build systems and communities that are more resilient to issues like urban heat and flooding, we can potentially mitigate some of the worst outcomes of these stressors,” Page-Tan says.