An analysis of community resilience indicators in the South Texas Bend region

Date

2022-12

Authors

Sheasby, Yvonne Marie

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Abstract

Community Resilience is the collective ability to diversify the strengths in a community and establish safeguards to better mitigate impacts from disasters. The application of community resilience is different in every community because of their unique characteristics and what hazards they face. This is one of the reasons why measuring community resilience at the local level is vital. Since Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas mid-coast in 2017, the Coastal Bend region and all the local governments within have shifted their focus increasingly toward community resilience and currently need assistance with resilience capacity-building. To identify their needs and what capacity exists already, communities in the Coastal Bend region should conduct an analysis of community resilience indicators and the assessment methodologies they are included in. Though there are several community resilience assessment methodologies worldwide, only 8 out of 73 indices met the selection criteria established during this study and were included in the analysis. It is difficult to know which assessment methodology is best to use for different types of communities and situations. Many communities, especially in rural and underserved areas, lack the resources to conduct and implement resilience measurements. The purpose of this study is to develop a new methodology to determine which community resilience assessment tool(s) are best to use at the local level by conducting a case study analysis in three counties in the South Texas Coastal Bend region, which include Nueces, Refugio, and San Patricio. After distributing two surveys and conducting two focus group sessions, the results were used to help evaluate if community resilience measurement at the local level can be adapted to take into account all shocks and stressors.

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Keywords

community resilience, data analysis, disaster preparedness, indicators, natural disaster mitigation, resilience assessment

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Attribution 4.0 International

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