Applying systems thinking for resilience planning: An invitation for graduate students

CResT, or the City Resilience Toolkit, is a compendium of systems thinking activities for resilience planning. It was produced in 2020 under the Coastal Cities at Risk in the Philippines (CCARPH): Investing in Climate and Resilience Project.

The toolkit approaches resilience planning through the lens of systems thinking, or “big picture” thinking, which considers feedbacks and interconnections from various components within the system, and thus seeks to address root causes rather than symptoms with band-aid solutions.

It is divided into three main parts, which reflect three phases of resilience planning: Problem Diagnosis, Stakeholder Engagement, and Action Planning. Each part consists of activities which incorporate systems thinking into the planning process, and details its links to resilience issues. The flexible format of the activities also allows them to be adaptable for different contexts. More information about CResT may be found here.

We invite graduate students who may be interested in conducting a thesis or capstone project around the concepts of systems thinking and resilience to consider using the toolkit as part of their study. Interested students may write to us at ais@ateneo.edu.