USAID Resilience Measurement Practical Guidance Note Series GN01 - Risk and Resilience Assessments
Why a Systems Approach?
Systems thinking is a way of organizing a set of related units or elements and identifying the interconnections, patterns and structures that make up the whole. Understanding social-ecological systems, for instance, requires understanding how people think, engage with one another and their environment, and react to and affect changes from the local level to the national (or even global) level.
A systems approach may help to build effective resilience strategies and programming because it emphasizes consideration of the cross-scalar and interacting factors that influence the ability of people to prepare for and manage risk within complex, dynamic contexts.