Advancing Resilience Measurement

The 'Advancing Resilience Measurement' report documents a consultation held on May 17-18, 2022, in Washington, D.C., convened by the University of Arizona, the Global Resilience Partnership, and USAID. The event brought together 50 experts to establish core principles and priorities for measuring resilience across four thematic areas: demand-driven evidence, psychosocial well-being, systems resilience, and climate adaptation. The report aims to address gaps in current measurement approaches to better inform development policy and programming.

• Resilience measurement must be demand-driven, requiring the co-production of knowledge with evidence users, including local communities, to balance top-down donor needs with bottom-up local needs. This involves integrating indigenous knowledge and creating feedback loops to provide timely evidence.
• There is a need for a diverse range of measurement methods—including qualitative, quantitative, AI-supported analyses, and longitudinal panel data—to meet varying user needs and reinforce trust in findings, as some users prefer Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) while others trust qualitative evidence.
• Psychosocial well-being is identified as a critical outcome, an enabling condition for other outcomes, and a source of resilience. Measurement must account for cultural biases, as many constructs reflect a Western bias, and must adhere to 'do no harm' principles to avoid causing distress or trauma to participants.
• Systems resilience measurement is complicated by the subjective nature of defining system boundaries and the difficulty of validating resilience sources without clear systems-level well-being outcomes. A priority is to understand how systems-level dynamics impact household and community resilience.
• Resilience measurement can complement climate adaptation measurement by focusing on capacities that enable adaptation without compromising future well-being. This approach must account for 'maladaptation' and the compound nature of risks where climate, conflict, and health shocks interact.
• The consultation identified several immediate priorities, including the formation of a technical working group for psychosocial resilience, the development of a typology for resilience evidence users, and the creation of joint resilience and climate adaptation measurement teams in the Horn of Africa and Sahelian West Africa.

APA

Global Resilience Partnership (n.d.). Advancing Resilience Measurement. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/advancing-resilience-measurement-consultation-report-1-1.pdf

Chicago

Global Resilience Partnership. Advancing Resilience Measurement. n.d. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/advancing-resilience-measurement-consultation-report-1-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Global Resilience Partnership |title=Advancing Resilience Measurement |url=https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/advancing-resilience-measurement-consultation-report-1-1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{globalresiliencepartnershipndadvancing, author = {{Global Resilience Partnership}}, title = {{Advancing Resilience Measurement}}, institution = {Global Resilience Partnership}, url = {https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/advancing-resilience-measurement-consultation-report-1-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }