Benchmarking Community Disaster Resilience in Nepal

Building disaster resilience is a stated goal of disaster risk reduction programs. Recent research emphasizes a need for a greater understanding of community disaster response and recovery capacity so that communities can absorb shocks and withstand severe conditions and progress through the recovery period more efficiently. Nepal, which is prone to a multitude of hazards and having recently experienced a large earthquake in 2015, provides a unique opportunity for exploring disaster resilience in the developing world context. To date, no study investigating community disaster resilience across the entire country of Nepal exists. This study quantifies disaster resilience at Nepal's village level, primarily using census data. Guided by the Disaster Resilience of Place (DROP) model, 22 variables were selected as indicators of social, economic, community, infrastructure, and environmental resilience. Community resilience was assessed for 3971 village development communities (VDCs) and municipalities while using a principal component analysis. Additionally, a cluster analysis was performed to distinguish spatial patterns of resilience. Analyses reveal differential community disaster resilience across the country. Communities in the capital city Kathmandu and in the western and far western Hill are relatively resilient. While the entire Tarai region, which holds the greatest proportion of Nepal's population, exhibits relatively low levels of resilience when compared to the rest of the county. The results from this analysis provide empirical evidence with the potential to help decision-makers in the allocation of scarce resources to increase resilience at the local level.