Neighbourhood Disaster Resilience Index: A Validation in the Context of Brisbane and Ipswich 2010/2011 Floods

Abstract

Despite the wide use of the resilience concept in urban planning and policy making, measuring this concept at neighbourhood level has not been done. The spatial scale at which most resilience models are conducted has limited utility in mitigation planning and capacity building. Moreover, most of the indices proposed by researchers in disaster resilience fail to validate the measures, especially in terms of the incremental validity. In this study, a Neighbourhood Disaster Resilience Index (NDRI) is proposed with a refined set of variables for measuring neighbourhood level disaster resiliency. The NDRI considers varying dimensions of disaster resiliency by using different socioeconomic, spatial and place-specific indicators to measure risk and exposure, sensitivity and coping capacity. The resilience scores and recovery outcomes are mapped and a series of regression analyses are conducted to build a robust, reliable and valid index. The mapping showed that neighbourhoods with different levels of resiliency create distinct spatial clusters that are mostly in middle and outer eastern areas along the northern side of the Brisbane River. The Damage Assessment and Reconstruction Monitoring data (DARMsys) has been utilised as a source of the real world resilience proxies to assess the external validity of NDRI. The results of analysis suggest that most of the selected indicators contribute incrementally to the recovery process and also the total score of NDRI shows consistency with expectations based on external proxies for disaster resiliency.