Disasters caused by natural hazards often lead to significant and long-lasting disruptions of economic, social and ecological systems. To improve both ex-ante disaster risk reduction and ex-post recovery, increasing attention is placed on strengthening the “disaster resilience” of communities, cities, regions and countries. However, a lack of empirical data and evidence, a high diversity in assessment and measurement approaches as well as various definitions of disaster resilience make it difficult to establish a solid understanding of what contributes to disaster resilience and how it can be measured. This hinders targeted resilience strengthening investments and actions across all levels, that are increasingly demanded in the context of climate change adaptation and sustainable development.

This session aims to discuss concepts and frameworks that improve the understanding of economic, social and ecological resilience to various natural hazards (e.g. floods, droughts, wildfires) as well as to review current frameworks and tools that aim to measure disaster resilience. We invite submissions addressing process- and outcome-based approaches to assess or measure disaster resilience, as well as studies using remote sensing or other innovative approaches such as predictive models aiming to quantify disaster resilience. We particularly encourage presentations on operationalized and applied resilience assessment frameworks, case studies using new data sets to measure resilience as well new tools and approaches to engage with decision makers, practitioners and the general public. We also welcome submissions from governments at all levels, the development and humanitarian sector as well as practitioners that effectively work for the hazard affected communities both from the developed and developing world.