Abstract: We are paying attention to the resilience agenda now because it has become policy, but policy must be measured. Resilience has been used in many fields of science over the past seven decades, and it is now also found in political science, business administration, sociology, history, disaster planning, urban planning and international development. The shared use of the term does not, however, imply unified concepts of resilience, nor the theories in which it is embedded. The use of resilience across such varied fields does however indicate its appeal; and perhaps it has become a ‘metaphor’ for something that cannot be directly observed or measured.