Metrics for Evaluating and Improving Community Resilience

Abstract

The growing risk of natural and artificial or manufactured hazards combined with a lack of community preparedness have revealed the necessity for comprehensive and effective metrics for evaluating and improving a community’s resilience, i.e., the ability of communities to prepare for, withstand, and recover from disasters. In this paper, the authors review existing community resilience metrics and tools, classifying them into one of three main categories: community-level, sector-specific, or sociological. The paper provides short descriptions of each metric and comparisons across metrics within the three main categories and across classes. The authors assess the strengths and limitations of these metrics, discuss challenges in improving community resilience, and provide recommendations for the development of new measures of resilience. The paper concludes with an outlook on the future of community resilience, particularly the need for metrics that apply across hazards, geographic areas, and factors affecting resilience. The authors propose that effective metrics are characterized by: breadth, measures that address community resilience comprehensively; utility, measures that are able to be utilized by the relevant entities to undertake actions to improve resilience; and scientific merit, measures that are scientifically validated through statistical methods, case studies, and fieldwork.