Building a resilient local council: evidence from flood disasters in Italy

Purpose - This paper investigates resilience to extreme weather events (EWE) in a sample of Italian local councils (LC), impacted by flood disasters. Whether resilience as a concept is adopted by the affected councils and factors that promote or inhibit local council resilience are explored. Design/methodology - Using semi-structured interviews, we investigate seven Italian local councils that were severely impacted by the flood event. An interview protocol was developed and background information collected. A number of themes were drawn from the interview transcripts and relationships with the relevant literature were examined. Findings - The findings highlight that the adoption of the concept of resilience is at an early stage in the LCs decision and policy-making. We find that the financial resources and the external relations management with other public entities, NGOs and local communities, promote the LCs resilience during and after an EWE. By contrast, bureaucratic constraints and poor urban planning restrain resilience. The findings suggest that LCs resilience needs to be distinguished from local community resilience. Originality/value- The paper contributes to the literature on public sector management and investigates the under-researched area of resilience within the context of the public sector, vis-a-vis, local government. In particular the realisation that EWE are not the realm only of emergency personnel, but that local government managers have an integral role placed upon them during and especially after the EWE.