Community resilience to volcanic hazard consequences

Central to contemporary emergency management is the use of risk management principles to promote community resilience to a range of potential hazard e ffects. Realising this goal requires that the community and personal charac teristics that facilitate the ability to `bounce back' from adversity are i dentified and modeled. This paper describes the role of self-efficacy, prob lem-focused coping, sense of community and age in predicting resilience to the social consequences of volcanic hazard activity following the 1995 and 1996 eruptions at Ruapehu volcano, New Zealand. The nature of the relations hips observed suggest that resilience should be conceptualised and managed in a contingent rather than a prescriptive manner. The implications of the findings for community risk perception, predicting resilience within an all -hazards management framework, community hazard reduction planning, resilie nce assessment and evaluation, and risk communication is discussed.