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1. Introduction
Disasters have been part of human existence since the beginning of time, however the impact of these events have become more pronounced in recent decades leading to increase in loss of lives, livelihoods, infrastructure, biodiversity and linked socio-ecological systems. The dramatic impact of hazards and disasters on human systems have caused society to create new scientific fields, policies and programmes to deal with their consequences. One such scientific field that has risen to prominence since the early 1990s is the field of disaster risk management (Van der Waldt, 2013). The field has used concepts such as vulnerability, and risk to explain why human systems are susceptible to disasters whilst also formulating possible explanation and tools to determine how to reduce disaster risk. A prominent contemporary issue of debate and practice in reducing disaster risk is the notion of resilience (Miller et al., 2010). Originally introduced from the field of ecology, the operational definition of resilience adopted in the paper within a disaster context is the defined as “ability of a community to respond and recover from disaster impacts through adaptive processes that facilitate the ability of the social system to re-organize, change, and learn in response to a disaster” (Timmerman, 1981; Pelling, 2003; Cutter et al., 2008).
In spite of the contemporary nature of resilience in the disaster risk reduction discourse very little agreement exists between academics and practitioners as to preferential methods to build disaster resilience in disaster and hazard affected communities (Maru, 2010; Gaillard, 2010; Zobel, 2011; Alexander, 2013). A possible avenue for exploration presented in this paper is the use of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory. The application of systems thinking (including CAS) in the understanding of disaster resilience is not part of a completely new discourse (Cutter et al., 2008; Frerks et al., 2011). However, the use CAS as a theoretical perspective to study disaster resilience is still in its infancy. The inherent similarities between the concept of resilience and CAS could provide ample practical and theoretical contributions to the field of disaster risk studies and therefore warrants further investigation. A better understanding of disaster resilience and its underlying dynamics (as illuminated by the application of CAS and hazard) could in future provide an effective...