Increasingly, communities throughout the U.S. are facing threats and uncertainty from hazards exacerbated by climate change, population shifts, and land-use changes. States are tasked with mitigating environmental, health, and economic risks while building community resilience. As states across the country invest in building resilience, it is necessary to understand if that money is being spent wisely, and that the programs and activities we are investing in are resulting in increased resilience. Measuring resilience helps us to justify investments, learn from our actions, and demonstrate accountability. To date, it has been difficult to measure increases in resilience at the state level because resilience measurement is an emerging practice, with no standard approach.

Researchers from the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group and the University of South Carolina’s Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute (with support from co-authors at The Pew Charitable Trust, and the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative),  developed a new paper, State Strategies for Measuring Resilience: A Comparative Study of South Carolina and Washington’s Approaches. The goal of the paper is to contribute to the growing conversation about how to measure resilience by comparing their state’s resilience metrics and frameworks. Though the two states are located on opposite ends of the continent, have different geographic and political landscapes, and different community priorities and needs, researchers found that similar considerations underpin both frameworks. Additionally, they found that similar qualities shaped their approaches to measuring resilience:

• Metrics are place-based. Resilience is inherently place-based, meaning resilience priorities change depending on the location and scale of measurement. Metrics should reflect the aspects of resilience that are important to the geographic and cultural contexts of a given place.
• Measurement frameworks prioritize practicality over perfection. Prioritizing a short list of thoughtful, representative metrics will be more impactful and easier to communicate than a long list and are more likely to be implemented.
• Indicators of resilience are ‘evergreen’. Resilience is both a dynamic process that manifests over long timeframes, and a continuous process that requires adaptability to rapid events (e.g. hurricanes, earthquakes) and gradual changes (e.g. sea level rise, drought). Actions states take to build resilience can and will change over time as they respond to acute events and gradual changes. While resilience is an ongoing process that evolves with emerging risks and changing actions, meaningful progress can be seen and measured over time. Use of ‘evergreen’ indicators, those that act as fixed markers of success overtime, can capture the long timeframe of resilience. 

“South Carolina’s measurement framework and resilience context looks very different from Washington’s – yet we found that we asked ourselves similar questions, ran into similar challenges, and ultimately took similar steps to develop our frameworks,” said Carlie Stowe, climate resilience specialist for the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington and the paper’s lead author. “Although building resilience, and figuring out how to measure it, is difficult, working with our partners in South Carolina highlighted that we are all grappling with similar challenges, and we can learn a lot from working with one another.”

“Resilience metrics are important for helping governments demonstrate accountability,” added Margot Habets, the paper’s coauthor from the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina. “Metrics help to clearly communicate the intended results of the money they are investing in resilience actions, and communicate return on investment to the state legislature and public.”

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For more information, contact Stowe at stowec@uw.edu and Habets at mhabets@email.sc.edu.