Tools for Measurement of Resilience in Nepal: Literature review

Abstract

This Literature Review presents the results of an assignment commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID)’s South Asia Research Hub (SARH) on behalf of DFID’s Nepal Country Office. The assignment was carried out by IMC Worldwide, in partnership with Garama 3C Ltd, and though DAI Europe. The purpose of the Review is to identify tools and methods for the measurement of resilience, that are potentially applicable to or adaptable for DFID Nepal’s Resilience Portfolio and wider portfolio, over the 3 themes of Growth, Governance and Inclusion. The principal purpose of the Review is to identify tools and methods that can be used to assess the resilience benefits delivered by the DFID Nepal portfolio. To operationalise the concept of resilience, it is important to identify the system (or population) whose resilience is being addressed, the hazards (shocks and stresses) to which the system needs to be resilient, and the impacts of those hazards that improved resilience is assumed or intended to reduce. This framing indicates that resilience might be measured in terms of: the magnitude of a particular type of hazard (e.g. earthquake, flood, drought etc.) that a system can accommodate without experiencing unacceptable harm the magnitude of the impacts of hazard on a system (i.e. losses and damages) the set of characteristics that influence a system’s resilience to one or more hazards. This framing is used to organise the literature on resilience measurement according to the measurement approach taken (i.e. hazard, impact or system-focused approach)