The six capacities of community resilience: evidence from three small Texas communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey

This article builds upon disaster scholarship that suggests community resilience is driven by six capacities: social, economic, physical, human, institutional, and environmental. Together, these capacities constitute a conceptual framework that can be used to investigate and assess community resilience. While recent scholarship has provided insights into how resilience operates in large communities, there remain questions about whether this conceptual framework is appropriate for the study of resilience in small communities. To narrow this knowledge gap, we conducted interviews with twenty-six subjects from three small Texas communities affected by Hurricane Harvey: City of Dickinson; City of Port Aransas; and Town of Refugio. Analysis of the interview data confirms that the six capacities of resilience provide an appropriate framework for the investigation of resilience in small communities. Given the complex and dynamic nature of community resilience, the findings also suggest that it is unlikely policymakers will be able to develop a unified policy solution for hazard events that is appropriate for all communities. Rather, policymakers need to consider community-based resilience solutions, driven by local strengths and weaknesses, that facilitate the reduction of risks associated with hazard events.