Development and testing of a community flood resilience measurement tool

Abstract

Abstract. Given the increased attention on resilience strengthening in international humanitarian and development work, there is a growing need to invest in its measurement and the overall accountability of "resilience strengthening" initiatives. The purpose of this article is to present our framework and tool for measuring community-level resilience to flooding and generating empirical evidence and to share our experience in the application of the resilience concept. At the time of writing the tool is being tested in 75 communities across eight countries. Currently 88 potential sources of resilience are measured at the baseline (initial state) and end line (final state) approximately 2 years later. If a flood occurs in the community during the study period, resilience outcome measures are recorded. By comparing pre-flood characteristics to post-flood outcomes, we aim to empirically verify sources of resilience, something which has never been done in this field. There is an urgent need for the continued development of theoretically anchored, empirically verified, and practically applicable disaster resilience measurement frameworks and tools so that the field may (a) deepen understanding of the key components of "disaster resilience" in order to better target resilience-enhancing initiatives, and (b) enhance our ability to benchmark and measure disaster resilience over time, and (c) compare how resilience changes as a result of different capacities, actions and hazards.

Flood resilience: a systematic review

“…Miguez and Ver ol (2017), however, use indicators to measure relative resilience of design alternatives to determine which ones cope better with future conditions compared to baseline conditions. Moreover, Keating et al (2017) use indicators to measure post-outcome resilience as a means of validating indicators as true measures of resilience.…”

Spatial quantification of community resilience in contexts where quantitative data are scarce: The case of Muzarabani district in Zimbabwe

“…Although we do not debate the unresolved issues such as whether resilience is a spontaneous or a deliberate process, and the interactions that cause it, we do highlight the importance of transformative resilience, which implicates the role of power, politics and cultural values. We particularly examine the critical research gaps, the variables that are used to construct the resilience indexes and reiterate the need to select variables that are context specific, as there is “no one‐size‐fits‐all resilience measure, nor should there be” (Keating et al., , p. 3). The discussion critically examines the spatial variation of community resilience across 29 wards of Muzarabani, highlighting the implications of levels of resilience and the possible explanations and actions required to address the resilience gaps.…”

Why We Can No Longer Ignore Consecutive Disasters

“…The dynamic nature of exposure and vulnerability as causes of damages from consecutive disasters is even less understood than that of hazard (Formetta & Feyen, a; Smith et al, ). Moreover, DRM still often fails to address drivers of increasing exposure and vulnerability such as uncontrolled urbanization in high‐risk locations (Keating et al, ). Peduzzi () discusses how disaster risk can be perceived as a dynamic compound event caused in large part by anthropogenic actions and is linked to global change.…”