Re-centering the Livelihoods Framework for Understanding Systemic Resilience Pathways: A Multi-Context Evaluation using Resilience Assessment Indicators and Data

As climate change intensifies compound and cascading hazards, conventional single-risk frameworks often fail to capture the systemic nature of community vulnerability and adaptive capacity. To address this, we revisit the theoretical foundations of the Flood and Climate Resilience Measurement for Communities (F/CRMC), a tool grounded in the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (SRL) framework (Scoones, 1998). While the F/CRMC has generated extensive longitudinal data across five capitals (social, human, physical, financial, and natural) in over 500 global communities, its evaluative potential can be best realized by re-integrating the SRL lens to evaluate how livelihood strategies and institutional processes mediate resilience across different evaluative contexts.

 

We propose a methodology that re-categorizes FRMC indicators based on their functional role within the SLF cycle across three evaluative contexts:

• Vulnerability Context vs. Baseline Assets: We differentiate between indicators that define the external environment (enabling conditions) and those representing internal community capitals using comparative post-event data
• Proxies for Structures and Processes: By analyzing data from 2018–2025, we track how longitudinal changes in specific indicators - such as local leadership or inter-community coordination, serve as empirical proxies for the "transforming structures and processes" and contribute directly to livelihood outcomes or indirectly with changed livelihood assets/capitals.
• Dynamic Pathways: We investigate how the interplay between assets and interventions leads to measurable resilience outcomes.

 

Our findings reveal that certain indicators are not merely "assets" but act as catalytic drivers that influence the entire SLF loop. For example, social capital indicators frequently transition from "outcomes" of successful interventions to "enablers" of future livelihood strategies. Our results demonstrate that the SRL framework provides a robust mechanism for understanding systemic resilience, as it explicitly links assets to the transforming structures and processes that enable or constrain change. By mapping these dynamics, we critically assess the operability of indicators according to different evaluative purposes. This research bridges the gap between theoretical social science and large-scale empirical practice, offering actionable insights for evaluating resilience changes that are context-sensitive and strategically aligned with sustainable, multi-hazard resilience goals.