Project

Resilience Across Scales

Copyright

Gabriela Bila

Gabriela Bila

Resilience Across Scales is a research theme that encompasses the work of a few Media Lab Principal Investigators and their research groups. The teams review resilience at three scales, human, community and societal scale and ask the following questions:  

Human: How can humans become more physically and emotionally resilient?
Community: How can we increase the social and environmental resilience of the communities where we live and work?
Societal: How can we improve economic and public health resilience at the global scale?

In addition, the teams consider essential prerequisites for resilience at all scales:
Trust: The importance of building trust in order to collectively address challenges in life.
Communication: Why new ways of communicating and consensus building are essential in a polarized world.
Education: The need for more effective and equitable learning platforms in order to make informed decisions in a complex world.

This theme was first proposed as a cross-group theme during the summer of 2020 when the ML Charrettes were announced. The theme is also featured in the Fall 2020 Out of Lab Experience, an event bringing together Media Lab member companies and researchers to discuss new work, pressing issues, and opportunity to impact change.