There is increasing policy and research interest in disaster resilience, yet the extant literature is still mired in definitional debates, epistemological orientations of researchers, and differences in basic approaches to measurement. As a consequence, there is little integration across domains and disciplines on community resilience assessment, its driving forces, and geographic variability. Using US counties as the study unit, this paper creates an empirically-based resilience metric called the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) that is both conceptually and theoretically sound, yet, easy enough to compute for use in a policy context. A common set of variables were used to measure the inherent resilience of counties in the United States according to six different domains or capitals as identified in the extant literature – social, economic, housing and infrastructure, institutional, community, and environmental. Data were from public and freely accessible data sources. Counties in the US Midwest and Great Plains states have the most inherent resilience, while counties in the west, along the US-Mexico border, and along the Appalachian ridge in the east contain the least resilience. Further, it was found that inherent resilience is not the opposite of social vulnerability, but a distinctly different construct both conceptually and empirically. While understanding the overall variability in resilience, the BRIC is easily deconstructed to its component parts to provide guidance to policy makers on where investments in intervention strategies may make a difference in the improvement of scores. Such evidence-based research has an opportunity to influence public policy focused on disaster risk.

The geographies of community disaster resilience

PURPOSE: This study creates a COVID-19 susceptibility scale at the county level, describes its components, and then assesses the health and socioeconomic resiliency of susceptible places across the rural-urban continuum. METHODS: Factor analysis grouped 11 indicators into 7 distinct susceptibility factors for 3,079 counties in the conterminous United States. Unconditional mean differences are assessed using a multivariate general linear model. Data from 2018 are primarily taken from the US Census Bureau and CDC. RESULTS: About 33% of rural counties are highly susceptible to COVID-19, driven by older and health-compromised populations, and care facilities for the elderly. Major vulnerabilities in rural counties include fewer physicians, lack of mental health services, higher disability, and more uninsured. Poor Internet access limits telemedicine. Lack of social capital and social services may hinder local pandemic recovery. Meat processing facilities drive risk in micropolitan counties. Although metropolitan counties are less susceptible due to healthier and younger populations, about 6% are at risk due to community spread from dense populations. Metropolitan vulnerabilities include minorities at higher health and diabetes risk, language barriers, being a transportation hub that helps spread infection, and acute housing distress. CONCLUSIONS: There is an immediate need to know specific types of susceptibilities and vulnerabilities ahead of time to allow local and state health officials to plan and allocate resources accordingly. In rural areas it is essential to shelter-in-place vulnerable populations, whereas in large metropolitan areas general closure orders are needed to stop community spread. Pandemic response plans should address vulnerabilities.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jrh.12477

Community Susceptibility and Resiliency to COVID-19 Across the Rural-Urban Continuum in the United States.

Record-breaking fire seasons are becoming increasingly common worldwide, and large wildfires are having extraordinary impacts on people and property, despite years of investments to support social–ecological resilience to wildfires. This has prompted new calls for land management and policy reforms as current land and fire management approaches have been unable to effectively respond to the rapid changes in climate and development patterns that strongly control fire behaviour and continue to exacerbate the risks and hazards to human communities. Promoting social–ecological resilience in rapidly changing, fire-susceptible landscapes requires adoption of multiple perspectives of resilience, extending beyond ‘basic resilience’ (or bouncing back to a similar state) to include ‘adaptive resilience’ and ‘transformative resilience’, which require substantial and explicit changes to social–ecological systems. Clarifying these different perspectives and identifying where they will be most effective helps prioritize efforts to better coexist with wildfire in an increasingly flammable world. Record-breaking fire seasons are becoming the new normal, prompting calls for land management and policy reforms. This Perspective clarifies different types of resilience to wildfire to prioritize efforts to better coexist with increasingly fire-prone conditions.

https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2019/rmrs_2019_mcwethy_d001.pdf

Rethinking resilience to wildfire

Disasters are unpredictable events that have catastrophic impacts. There is now a focus on disaster resilience and capacity building in the recovery of the community. Resilience literature also suggests a staged model of disaster impacts and likelihood of staged manifestations of resilience. It also points to a potentially important link between place-based social cohesion and resilience. This article reports on comparative findings of cohesion and resilience indices in four Canadian rural communities that experienced disasters and evacuation in potentially different phases of coping and resilience. Buckner’s Index of Cohesion and the Index of Perceived Community Resilience are examined in each community for relationships (correlation) between cohesion and resilience and for differences in the intensity of these variables. Our findings show a consistent significant positive correlation between cohesion and resilience, although the strength of the relationship varies. Findings also show place-specific differentiation in the mean intensity of both cohesion and resilience scores; temporal phases of disaster recovery for each community are also noted. This information can help in disaster recovery planning by ensuring supports are available at key points in time for communities that experience disasters. Other research is needed that compares communities that have experienced different types of disasters and over time periods to document any changes to resilience or cohesion thereby assisting with disaster policy development and programme planning.

Social cohesion and resilience across communities that have experienced a disaster

The role of social resilience in disaster management continues to gain increasing attention and interest from both researchers and practitioners. This paper critically reviews existing frameworks and methods to understand their application in a disaster context, to highlight key challenges and future directions for developing robust social resilience assessment frameworks. The analysis revealed a lack of consistency in key concepts used to measure social resilience to disasters. This results in significant confusion in the way key concepts are understood, interpreted, and applied. Due to the multi-faceted nature of social resilience concepts, there are pronounced theoretical and practical difficulties in carrying out a rapid, but rational, accurate, and meaningful assessment of social resilience to disasters. Many of the key process-oriented indicators are not included in the existent social resilience frameworks, since they are not easy to operationalise due to their dynamic nature. Therefore, a comprehensive social resilience framework that can be adapted to different contexts and integrated with specific measurement tools and guidelines is necessary. Such a comprehensive framework can make resilience measurement consistent across geographies by adapting it with context specific resilience characteristics.

A critical review of social resilience assessment frameworks in disaster management

Community resiliency: emerging theoretical insights

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Community resiliency: emerging theoretical insights