Practical approaches for measuring resilience
The Program
2010-2025
- ACCCRN: 2010-2012
- Vietnam City Resilience Index:2016
- Climate Resilience Measurement for Communities: 2021-2022, and 2024
- Vietnam City Resilience Indicators: 2024-2025
Implemented in: Vietnam; Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Malawi, Mexico, Montenegro, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Spain, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Zimbabwe
Partners: Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, Zurich North America, DuPont, IFRC, Practical Action Nepal, Practical Action Peru, Practical Action Senegal, Practical Action Bangladesh, Mexican Red Cross, IIASA
Funders: Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, Zurich Insurance Group, Zurich North America, DuPont, Swiss Development Corporation, American Red Cross, Global Disaster Preparedness Center, IFRC
Overview
ISET-International has been working with communities and local to national governments on resilience indicators since 2010. Our resilience indicator work has spanned multiple projects and been funded by multiple different donors. The commonalities in this work lie in our commitment to building practical indicator sets that align with existing data, can be effectively applied, and build users’ understanding of what is required to build resilience.
ISET’s initial foray into resilience indicators was as part of our work as technical lead of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network in 2010. In this capacity, supporting ACCCRN’s ten partner cities to not only build their resilience but to also track that resilience over time was critical. Our resilience indicator work in ACCCRN was one of the first pieces of work conducted on measuring resilience in urban settings.
In 2016, funded by Rockefeller Foundation, ISET worked with The Asia Foundation to adapt the 100 Resilient Cities City Resilience Framework (CRF) as an urban climate resilience indicator set for application in Vietnam. Though theoretically robust, in practice it was difficult for city staff to apply independent of significant technical support.
Building on this experience, funded by AFD, and in collaboration with the Vietnam Ministry of Construction, in 2024 ISET began further refining the Vietnam City Resilience Index. Indicators have been further streamlined to align with already existing datasets, and the indicator set is being piloted in central and south Vietnam. The Ministry of Construction’s goal is to finalize the indicator set for application nationwide in larger (level 3 and above) cities.
In 2013 the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance developed the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC), a participatory method for measuring community flood resilience. ISET, in collaboration with IIASA, Zurich, and the IFRC, revised the FRMC in 2021 to incorporate extreme heat and further adapt the tool for application in urban settings. ISET has since been involved in adding additional climate hazards. The resulting Climate Resilience Measurement for Communities (CRMC) is currently designed for application to floods, extreme heat, wildfires and tropical storms.
What we deliver
- To effectively build resilience, it is critical to be able to track progress. ISET’s resilience indicator sets are practical – drawing on existing data and designed for independent application by communities or cities – and actionable.
- Our resilience indicator tools are designed not just to measure resilience, but also to deliver a resilience education. They help users use available knowledge to identify and clearly articulate resilience gaps.
