Resilience: A Design Approach in Chaotic Environment

Despite advances that has been made in natural sciences, human is still unable to predict accurate status of some of these natural disasters. Experience has shown that in the absence of necessary infrastructures natural hazards may result in massive tragedies. One of the important tasks that landscape architects should tackle these days is the management of these threats and their impact on human environments. Landscape as an innately dynamic phenomenon, can offer new perspectives and approaches for dealing with transitional environments.
The Chaos Theory proposes principals for managing stressful systems in order to enable them to endure damages. Resilience can be known as the reflection of management strategies of Chaos theory in ecology and environmental management systems. This concept has suggested a few resolutions to confronting unexpected disasters.
Resilience is the result of revision of the earlier concepts of sustainability. In the new conceptions of ecological sustainability, it is defined as the ability to adapt to different environmental conditions, and perceived as a dynamic concept. Considering dynamics of the landscape in this approach, gives opportunities for interactive responses and sustainability of landscape, especially in unpredictable situations and crisis conditions. This essay, at first offers introduction of the principals of Chaos theory and its impact on decision management. Furthermore, it expresses the reflections of Chaos theory on sustainable ecology and strategies that it represents for designing resilient landscapes.