Towards measurable resilience: A novel framework tool for the assessment of resilience levels in slums

Abstract

This paper investigates the need for a generic technique to be applied in the assessment of resilience-related projects in slums -particularly for localised infrastructure at a community level -and proposes a novel framework tool for this purpose. The paper outlines the development of the framework tool, as well as its pilot testing on the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme in Kibera, Nairobi. occurring in Asia (Doocy, et al., 2013). There is a growing body of evidence that urban populations in low and middle income countries are becoming increasingly susceptible to disasters (Dodman, Hardoy and Satterthwaite 2008). There has been a considerable interest, both in academic literature and policy formulation, in building the resilience capacity of urban populations, in particular of vulnerable communities in slums. Upgrading projects in slum settings present a set of unique challenges to planners and engineers as they are often characterised by resource constraints, high density housing, lack of land tenure, contested social power structures and marginalised localities. RESILIENCEResilience concepts and approaches have been adopted and applied by several academic and professional disciplines including engineering, psychology, ecology, organisational and management studies, and risk and disaster management (Alexander, 2013). The concept was first applied to the study of ecological systems by Holling in the early 1970s (Holling, 1973;Johnson & Blackburn, 2014), and has since been adopted and used liberally by various professions to frame a response to poorly planned and managed urbanisation. Béné defines resilience as:"any capacity and skills, and action, strategy, investment and anticipation, which helps individual[s], households and communities to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the impacts of a particular adverse event (shock, stress, or (un)expected changes)." (Béné 2013) Thinking and writing on disaster risk management has increasingly embraced resilience terminology and thinking, although there has been little consistency in understanding and Highlights There is a need for a generic technique to be applied for the assessment of localised infrastructure at community level. The paper outlines the development of a framework which is then applied in a slum in Kenya  The added value of the framework discussed in this article is its application to informal settlements and the ease of use with limited data.

Measuring the Disaster Resilience of an Urban Community Using ANP‐FCE Method from the Perspective of Capitals

“…Community resilience is usually categorized into social, economic, and natural dimensions, or more exhaustively into infrastructure, physical, and institutional and human aspects, which are sometimes treated as secondary indicators within social, economic, or environmental dimensions. In addition, knowledge, health and happiness, organization, strategy, leadership, business, and other factors are seen in some studies (Mayunga, ; Cutter, Burton, and Emrich, ; Ranjan and Abenayake, ; Woolf et al., ; Heng et al., ; Davies and Davies, ; Tian et al., ).…”

A scoping review of the development resilience literature: Theory, methods and evidence

“…Others (Quandt, 2019) construct composite indices across the five asset categories or aggregate assets using principal components (Browne et al, 2014), while others (Stanford et al, 2017) argue that households who score highly on all five asset categories (as well as a sixth that they call institutional capital) are best placed to be resilient. Some of the studies that emphasize resilience capacity in terms of household assets also note that resources beyond the household such as infrastructure and social services contribute to resilience (Birhanu et al, 2017;Stanford et al, 2017;Woolf et al, 2016). Béné (2013, p. 22) expands on this point, arguing that "resilience is not simply about coping strategies that help households to 'survive' a shock; resilience is also about adaptive strategies or even transformative strategies.…”

“…Other studies that do not use a systems perspective nonetheless also invoke multiple scales (i.e., individuals, households, communities, systems) or definitions that do not specify scale (Ahmed et al 2016;Garschagen et al 2011;Woolf et al 2016). A number cite ecological or social-ecological systems resilience definitions but then also adopt resilience definitions or terminology more closely aligned with individual well-being and positive transformation, including social resilience (Amoako 2018;Mozumder et al 2018), general resilience (Waters and Adger 2017) and household disaster resilience (Galarza-Villamar et al 2018).…”

Measuring Resilience of Urban Slum to Climate Induced Disasters: A Study on Barishal City Corporation, Bangladesh

“…This explains why economic, natural, and social dimensions are part of the CDRI framework. The institutional and physical dimensions are added owing to the fact that communities are embedded in a built environment (physical dimension) and that, in the event of a disaster, local government has a crucial role to play (institutional dimension) in confronting and managing such an event (Prashar et al, 2012;Woolf et al, 2016).…”