Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities and the Gulf Research Program

The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities and the Gulf Research Program summarizes the existing portfolio of relevant or related resilience measurement efforts and notes gaps and challenges associated with them. It describes how some communities build and measure resilience and offers four key actions that communities may take to build and measure their resilience. This report also provides recommendations to the Gulf Research Program to build and measure resilience in the Gulf of Mexico region.

The frequency and severity of disasters over the last few decades have presented unprecedented challenges for communities across the United States. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina exposed the complexity and breadth of a deadly combination of existing community stressors, aging infrastructure, and a powerful natural hazard. In many ways, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was a turning point for understanding and managing disasters, as well as related plan making and policy formulation. It brought the phrase "community resilience" into the lexicon of disaster management.

TRB is one of seven major programs of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.