The COPEWELL Rubric: A Self-Assessment Toolkit to Strengthen Community Resilience to Disasters

Monica Schoch-Spana, Kimberly Gill, Divya Hosangadi, Cathy Slemp, Robert Burhans, Janet Zeis, Eric G. Carbone and Jonathan Links
Additional contact information
Monica Schoch-Spana: Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA
Kimberly Gill: Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA
Divya Hosangadi: Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA
Cathy Slemp: Independent Consultant
Robert Burhans: Independent Consultant
Janet Zeis: Chester County Department of Emergency Services, West Chester, PA 19380, USA
Eric G. Carbone: US Centers for Disease Control, Center for Preparedness and Response, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
Jonathan Links: Johns Hopkins University Center for Public Health Preparedness, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 13, 1-17

Abstract: Measurement is a community endeavor that can enhance the ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from a disaster, as well as foster learning and adaptation. This project’s purpose was to develop a self-assessment toolkit—manifesting a bottom-up, participatory approach—that enables people to envision community resilience as a concrete, desirable, and obtainable goal; organize a cross-sector effort to evaluate and enhance factors that influence resilience; and spur adoption of interventions that, in a disaster, would lessen impacts, preserve community functioning, and prompt a more rapid recovery. In 2016–2018, we engaged in a process of literature review, instrument development, stakeholder engagement, and local field-testing, to produce a self-assessment toolkit (or “rubric”) built on the Composite of Post-Event Well-being (COPEWELL) model that predicts post-disaster community functioning and resilience. Co-developing the rubric with community-based users, we generated self-assessment instruments and process guides that localities can more readily absorb and adapt. Applied in three field tests, the Social Capital and Cohesion materials equip users to assess this domain at different geo-scales. Chronicling the rubric’s implementation, this account sheds further light on tensions between community resilience assessment research and practice, and potential reasons why few of the many current measurement systems have been applied.

Keywords: community resilience; disaster; measurement; assessment; social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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