Developing a Framework for Measuring Community Resilience: Summary of a Workshop by Dominic A. Brose

Author:Dominic A. Brose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2015-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

4

Developing a Decision-Making Framework

Following the panel discussions, participants were divided into breakout groups. The groups corresponded to four overarching categories that the 2012 Disaster Resilience report recommended any index of resilience measures or indicators should include:

Vulnerable Populations

Critical and Environmental Infrastructure

Social Factors

Built Infrastructure

Each breakout group was tasked with identifying up to five key components within their category and providing objectives and goals for each component that could then be used to discuss specific resilience measures (See Box 4-1 for detailed instructions). Breakout groups were made up of participants at the workshop from diverse backgrounds, including academics and researchers, local decision makers and practitioners, and representatives from federal agencies, NGO’s, and the private sector. Effort was made to put together balanced groups that included experts in fields and disciplines directly related to the particular categories, as well as participants who work in other areas related to resilience that could provide alternate perspectives to the discussion. Using this workflow, each group was asked to develop a simple, hazard-neutral framework that could serve as a starting point for any community to begin to develop its own resilience measures. Tables with key points from each group’s discussion can be found in Appendix A.

Group One: Vulnerable Communities

The Vulnerable Communities breakout group began with the approach of trying to identify components as specific socially vulnerable groups, such as seniors, children, racial and ethnic minorities, low-income populations, non-English speakers, the homeless, the medically dependent, mobility impaired, persons in nursing homes, and persons with drug addictions. From the initial discussion, Group One discovered that this list of community groups did not provide the necessary overarching characteristics that would lead them to articulation of useful objectives. To address this issue, Group One identified characteristics that rendered certain population groups vulnerable through components that are based on the functional needs of an individual. For example, a person with special medical needs could be considered part of a vulnerable population if that individual had special communication needs, lacked independence, or required medical supervision. Other examples could include populations with transportation dependency, or that lack social and economic resources.

After identifying a series of components (see Appendix A), the group used the example of communication needs to begin to identify objectives for that component. Three objectives that were articulated included a) measuring the number of people in a community with special communication needs, b) identifying mechanisms to address communication needs with those who have a limited ability to receive or understand information, and c) identifying resources to assist these community members. Some of the representative communities that could be considered vulnerable due to communication needs included those who are non-English speaking, deaf/hearing-impaired, vision-impaired, illiterate, undocumented or documented immigrants, tourists, and/or students.

BOX 4-1 Breakout Group Instructions

The goal for each of the breakout group was to develop a simple, hazard-neutral framework to serve as a starting point for communities to begin to develop their own resilience measures. Workshop participants were divided into four pre-assigned groups, with 15 participants in each group. The breakout topics, based on

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