Regional resilience redefinition: Postpandemic challenge

Abstract

Regional resilience is understood as the ability of the socio-economic system to respond to rapid changes caused by various external factors. Such an external factor is the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, to which economies in many regions have not been able to respond adequately. They did not anticipate such a situation and have paid insufficient attention to some matters. The paper aims to identify new challenges that should be reflected in the development strategies of regions striving for a higher level of resilience to unexpected pandemic crises. The analysis is performed on the example of the prepared Strategy of Regional Development of the South Moravian Region for 2021-27. We have created a proposal of specific measures that should be involved in his type of strategic documents. In some generality, three topics proved to be critical. These are 1) the internet and cybersecurity, 2) health and social care, and 3) the availability and standardization of public and private services. The ability to move activities to the internet has met significant limits that need to be removed or overcome. The health and social care system will have to be re-evaluated in terms of the overall regional concept. The actual unavailability of basic services meant for many inhabitants a further deterioration of the uncomfortable situation.