This article extends ecological framings of resilience into socio-ecological and governance domains for urban infrastructure managers concerned with climate risk. Under moments of disruption, reliable and equitable access to adequate provision of public goods is anticipated to be increasingly challenging in cities across the world due to observed and anticipated disruptions of climate change and variability on city-wide infrastructures. Many cities facing such conditions are seeing rapid population and infrastructure growth enhancing exposure and vulnerability. One such example of disruptive climate risk is enhanced water scarcity. Private responses to the Cape Town drought adopted off-grid water technologies in order to secure their own supply while curtailing their dependence on the public water system. Unintended consequences of the nascent off-grid capacity created by private actors precipitated system transformations and accommodation challenges to disrupted public systems. The novel capacity generated through these responses to urban risk demonstrate what is identified here to be ‘partial functional redundancy’ – a key expression of resilience. Such response actions demonstrate partial and pragmatic expressions of redundancy through types of reserve capacity as a source of resilience in response to water insecurity.

本文将抗灾力的生态框架扩展到关注气候风险的城市基础设施管理者的社会生态和治理领域。在动荡的时刻，由于观察到和预期的气候变化和全市基础设施可变性的破坏，预计在世界各地的城市中，可靠，公平地获取充足的公共物品将越来越具有挑战性。许多面临这种情况的城市正在经历人口和基础设施的快速增长，从而增加了暴露程度和脆弱性。这种破坏性气候风险的例子之一就是水资源短缺的加剧。私人对开普敦干旱的应对措施是采用离网水技术，以确保其自身供应，同时减少对公共水系统的依赖。私人行为者新生的离网能力的意外后果导致了系统转型和对受破坏的公共系统的适应挑战。通过这些对城市风险的反应而产生的新能力证明了这里所说的“部分功能冗余”-弹性的关键体现。此类应对行动通过将各种储备能力作为应对水不安全状况的复原力来源，证明了部分和实用的冗余表达。