Prisoners of Scale: Downscaling Community Resilience Measurements for Enhanced Use

Sahar Derakhshan, Leah Blackwood, Margot Habets, Julia F. Effgen and Susan L. Cutter
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Sahar Derakhshan: Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Leah Blackwood: Department of Geography, Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
Margot Habets: Department of Geography, Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
Julia F. Effgen: Department of Geography, Federal University of Espirito Santo, Vitória 29075-910, Brazil
Susan L. Cutter: Department of Geography, Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: As improved data availability and disaster resilience knowledge help progress community resilience quantification schemes, spatial refinements of the associated empirical methods become increasingly crucial. Most existing empirically based indicators in the U.S. use county-level data, while qualitatively based schemes are more locally focused. The process of replicating resilience indices at a sub-county level includes a comprehensive study of existing databases, an evaluation of their conceptual relevance in the framework of resilience capitals, and finally, an analysis of the statistical significance and internal consistency of the developed metrics. Using the U.S. Gulf Coast region as a test case, this paper demonstrates the construction of a census tract-level resilience index based on BRIC (Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities), called TBRIC. The final TBRIC construct gathers 65 variables into six resilience capitals: social, economic, community, institutional, infrastructural, and environmental. The statistical results of tract- and county-level BRIC comparisons highlight levels of divergence and convergence between the two measurement schemes and find higher reliability for the fine-scale results.

Keywords: resilience indicators; geographical scale; Gulf coast; community resilience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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