Resilience of Territorial Socioecological Systems: Methodology of Analysis and Assessments

Regional Research of Russia. 2025. Vol. 15. No. Suppl 1. P. 84–99.

Sheludkov A.V., Zotova M.V., Vinogradova V.V., Glezer O.B., Gracheva R.G., Starikova A.V., Kotov A.V., Kurichev N.K.

The article develops a methodological approach to assessing the resilience of territorial socioecological
systems (TSES). Despite the widespread use of the concept of resilience, its interpretation remains
ambiguous and its quantitative assessment difficult. Resilience research is often fragmented across disciplines,
which belies both the complexity of the challenges facing modern society, from economic problems to
climate change, and the complexity of the TSES themselves (countries, regions, cities), in which the natural
environment, economy, and human community are closely intertwined. The authors propose moving away
from a narrow understanding of resilience as the ability to recover from (sector-specific) shocks towards a
broader concept that describes the ability of systems to continuously function and develop under the pressure
of various challenges. The article identifies five components of the TSES (natural environment, economy and
labor market, population/human potential, governance and community, territorial structure) and six system
properties (structural diversity, concentration, internal and external connectivity, dynamism, available
resources), which are considered as universal parameters of resilience. The presented component-by-component
categorization of the parameters allows for a comprehensive analysis of the state of TSES, their reactions
and adaptive potential and refinement of the specific set of quantitative/qualitative indicators depending
on the territory and the challenges it faces. The approach was tested through a case study of the challenges of
demographic shrinkage in the city of Troitsk in Chelyabinsk Oblast, aridization and desertification in the
republics of Kalmykia and Dagestan, and the 2024 flood in Orenburg Oblast.

Keywords: human potential, systems approach, governance, emergency, natural risks, socioeconomic crisis, territorial resilience