Suitable and standardized indicators to track progress in disaster and climate resilience are increasingly considered a key requirement for successfully informing efforts towards effective disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation.
This papert presents and analyzes a standardized community resilience measurement framework for flooding. The corresponding measurement tool is adapted from a so-called ‘technical risk grading’ approach as used in the insurance sector. The grading approach of indicators is based on a two-step process: (i) raw data is collected, and (ii) experts grade the indicators, called sources of resilience, based on this data.
This papert tests this approach using approximately 1.25 million datapoints collected across more than 118 communities in nine countries. The quantitative analysis is complemented by content analysis to validate the results from a qualitative perspective.
We find that some indicators can more easily be graded by looking at raw data alone, while others require a stronger application of expert judgement. We summarize the reasons for this through six key messages. One major finding is that resilience grades related to subjective characteristics such as ability, feel, and trust are far more dependent on expert judgment than on the actual raw data collected. Additionally, the need for expert judgement further increases if graders must extrapolate the whole community picture from limited raw data. Our findings regarding the role of data and grade specifications can inform ways forward for better, more efficient and increasingly robust standardized assessment of resilience.