Extreme weather and climate events research needs concepts to analytically capture processes that describe how extreme they are: depth of impact but mainly also temporal aspects such as length, speed and quality of recovery. This paper analyses resilience as a concept to provide these dimensions. The use of the term resilience proliferates in many contexts and disciplines. Interpretations may overlap or even contradict each other. This paper seeks to make a case for a more nuanced understanding of resilience, including the use of “qualifier adjectives” to emphasize differences. Starting from the original etymological meaning of resilience as “bouncing back” the paper aims an innovative (re)conceptualization to facilitate the practical use of resilience in disaster risk management. It is recommended to distinguish between resilience as ability, being a hazard independent pre-disposition for recovery, and resilience as a process, describing different bouncing back and bouncing forward mechanisms inherent in the different recovery phases. This proposed distinction would enable the assessment of recovery abilities before calamities occur and hence could serve as guide to disaster preparedness programmes. The suggested analysis of resilience as a process would open opportunities to use the concept describing preemptive resilience response (presilience), recovery as bouncing back towards a state preceding the hazard event, as well as progressive resilience (prosilience) as bouncing forward and transition of the disaster recovery phase into adaptation and further development.
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