Assessing Community Resilience:

What Matters and Where do you Start?

Susan L. Cutter Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute Department of Geography

Building Resilience Workshop V March 12-14, 2014 New Orleans, LA

US Context
Increasing exposure (more infrastructure and people in harms way) Aging infrastructure Migrating and aging populations Declining federal budgets Ineffective governance at federal level Increasing severity of climaterelated events

http://blog.al.com/stantis/2007/08/our_infrastructure.html

Outcome: Escalating losses

Global Context
Extreme events becoming normal or routine Interdependence and interconnectedness of society (local events cascade to global) Highly improbable events take on more policy interest (wicked problems) Widening gap in income inequality Increasing urbanization Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), Millennium Development Goals (MDG) ending 10-year cycle

How can HFA2 goals disaster risk reduction be reflected in post2015 sustainable development goals?

Recent Consensus Reports

http://www.preventionweb.net/english/professional/publications/v.php?id=33059 http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/foresight/docs/reducing-risk-management/12-1289-reducingrisks-of-future-disasters-report http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13457

Resilience: Ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events

Ingredients
Leadership and political will Governmental engagement in risk reduction Cross sector linkages with civil society and private interests Willingness to engage in peer to peer learning Integration of resilience into overall planning and development efforts

How do we get there?

United States
Build a culture of resilience Proactive investments in risk reduction and resilience Improved risk information, data and monitoring Make insurance premiums risk-based Have communities take responsibility for their decisions

Monmouth Beach, NJ

Photo Credit: S. Cutter

Reorient Spatial Planning

Move beyond immediate period of response and restoration of services and critical infrastructure
Hours Days Weeks Months Years

Pre-event planning for long term resilience

Establish baseline monitoring system to track pre-existing conditions in communities (residential and social structures; existing capabilities, etc. Consider what metrics are important to monitor before and after an event Enhance local community resilience as part of master planning for community development, planning for long term disaster recovery, or adaptation planning for climate change

Recipe for building resilience

Manage risks with flexible strategies and multiple tools Improve accuracy and consistency of existing disaster data Harmonize existing efforts to measure resilience Build strong local capacity Develop strong and complementary governance with policies taking longer-term views

Where to Begin Locally?

Know your hazards and exposurewho and what is at risk and where Understand your social and biophysical vulnerabilities Know your pattern of historic losses Anticipate future losses (climate change and other uncertainties)

Social vulnerability and climate sensitive hazards: drought, sea level rise, flooding, hurricane winds

Online hazard assessment tool: IHAT

Where to Begin Nationally?

The nation needs a consistent basis for measuring resilience that includes all of these dimensions.
Need to measure the ability of critical infrastructure to continue to perform; social factors (e.g., health, socioeconomic status) that enhance or limit a communitys ability to recover; indicators of the ability of buildings or structures to withstand different disasters (e.g., building codes, adopted and enforced); factors that capture the special needs of individuals and groups.

Photo: Elevating home near Sea Isle City, New Jersey Source: Susan Cutter

A resilience scorecard?

Understanding resilience as a system of systems

(person, household, structures)

Individual

(social groups, sectors, infrastructure)

Group

Spatial
(places, communities, ecosystems)

Three Perspectives

Resilience as an outcome Resilience as a process, capacity building Resilience as both a process and an outcome

Saint Martin, MS Feb. 2006; Mar. 2007

Measurement is not easy

What do you measure? How do you measure? What data do you use? How do you know if you got it right?

Community Capitals
Type of Resilience Social Explanation of concept at community level
Social characteristics enhancing access to resources, capacity to prepare, respond, recover, mitigate Economic vitality, role in loss reduction Organizational structures, planning, how organizations respond to changing conditions

Sample Supporting Research * Morrow, Tierney, Norris Rose, Chang Burby, Tierney, Godschalk

Economic Institutional

Infrastructure Community Environmental

Physical systems, interdependence, redundancies, cascading impacts Sense of community functioning, community ties, participation in governance, place attachment Biodiversity, ecosystem health, management plans, wetlands preservation, etc.

Perrow, Chang Vale and Campanella Gunderson, Laska

Sample Resilience Indices

Name ResilUS Author Renchler et al. Geographic Region SW Louisiana Attributes
Multi-attribute including physical, quantitative, spatial Multi-attribute (social, economic, physical, human) within disaster cycle, quantitative, spatial

Community Disaster Peacock et al. Resilience Indicators (CDRI)

Gulf Coast

Coastal Resilience Index (CRI)

Community Resilience Index

Emmer et al.
Sherrieb, Norris, Galea

LA-MS-AL
MS

Multi-attribute, qualitative self report

Dual attribute (economic development, social capital), qualitative, spatial

Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC)

Cutter et al.

Southeast US

Multi-attribute (social, economic, institutional, infrastructure, community competence), quantitative, spatial

Components of Disaster Resilience

A) Social

B) Economic

C) Institutional

+
D) Infrastructure

+
E) Community capital

+
F) Disaster Resilience

Identifying the dimensional drivers

Jackson MSA
County Hinds Madison Rankin
Social Economic Institutional Infrastructure Community Capital Score

0.73 0.80 0.89

0.67 0.72 0.68

0.45 0.50 0.51

0.82 0.35 0.37

0.62 0.59 0.51

3.29 2.97 2.95

Copiah
Simpson

0.53
0.56

0.55
0.56

0.47
0.36

0.31
0.35

0.50
0.52

2.36
2.34

Gulfport-Biloxi MSA
County Hancock Stone Harrison
Social Economic Institutional Infrastructure Community Capital Score

0.72 0.79 0.68

0.57 0.56 0.53

0.56 0.47 0.49

0.70 0.52 0.30

0.40 0.39 0.41

3.00 2.72 2.40

Resilience: Where are We?

Theory and conceptualizationjust beginning; practice is ahead of the science - Data availability (type, scale, frequency) o Measurement and comparability (social networks, capacity measures) - Model and index construction (qualitative, quantitative; single indicator vs. composite indicator; unit of analysis; validation)

o o

Sensitivity and uncertaintydo we have it right?

Application to community and policy makers

Sea Bright, New Jersey May 2013

Is this a resilient community?

Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans Jan. 2006 (L) Holy Cross Jan. 2011 (R)

Policy and decision-makers need to ask resilience for whom and to what?

Diamondhead, MS Oct 2005 (L), Oct 2007( R)