How mobile phones can be used to track people’s views on resilience: key findings from Myanmar
This brief synthesises some of the main findings from the (Rapid Response Research) RRR project, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the project’s new approaches. It provides quick highlights of eight insights and encourages readers to delve into the more detailed working papers associated with each key finding. Traditionally, resilience has relied on objective methods – where resilience is defined and evaluated externally, typically guided by literature reviews or consulting with outside ‘experts’.Yet objective approaches often miss an important source of knowledge: the wealth of information people have of their own resilience and capabilities. Subjective evaluations seek to capture just that. They factor in an individual’s insights into their ability to deal with risk by measuring perceptions, judgements and preferences. The RRR brings together these two innovations to look at how disasters affect households in eastern Myanmar. As part of the project, resilience-related information from 2,000 households was tracked before and after heavy monsoon flooding across two research sites in Kayin state – Hpa An and Mudon.