| Definition of resilience | Reference |
| The resilience of the coast is its self-organizing capacity to preserve actual and potential functions under changing hydraulic and morphological conditions. | Klein et al. (1998:263) |
| Resiliency is the ability to withstand an extreme natural event without suffering devastating losses, damage, diminished productivity, or quality of life, and without a large amount of assistance from outside the community. | Mileti (1999:32-33) |
| Resilience is the ability of an actor to cope with or adapt to hazard stress. It is a product of the degree of planned preparation undertaken in the light of potential hazard, and of spontaneous or premeditated adjustments made in response to felt hazard, including relief and rescue. | Pelling (2003:48) |
| Resilience is the capacity of linked social–ecological systems to absorb recurrent disturbances such as hurricanes or floods so as to retain essential structures, processes, and feedbacks. | Adger et al. (2005:1036) |
| Disaster resilience could be viewed as the intrinsic capacity of a system, community, or society that is predisposed to a shock or stress to adapt and survive by changing its nonessential attributes and rebuilding itself. | Manyena (2006:446) |
| Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. | Berkes (2007:284) |
| A resilient system is able to absorb hazard impacts without changing its fundamental functions; at the same time, it is able to renew, reorganize, and adapt when hazard impacts are significant. | López-Marrero and Tschakert (2011:230) |