BRIC | Guidance on Risk, Resilience, and Vulnerability Indices

Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC)

Description

The Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) describes the differences in community resilience among counties within the state and within the nation through a comparative community resilience score. BRIC is comprised of six broad categories of community disaster resilience. Used as an initial baseline for monitoring existing attributes of resilience to natural hazards, BRIC can be used to compare places to one another, to determine the specific drivers of resilience for counties, and to monitor improvements in resilience over time.

Analysis

BRIC considers six broad categories of community disaster resilience: Cultural/Social, Economic/Financial, Built Environment/Housing, Institutional/Governance, Community Capacity, Environmental/Natural.

What does this index provide?

BRIC provides a static view of community resilience for a particular moment in time; this enables users to:

Compare the community resilience among counties within the state and across the nation.
Compare or track community resilience changes over time, based on the three time periods: 2010, 2015, 2020.

For what level of government would this index be most useful?

Due to its level of granularity (county), this data should be useful at all levels of government:

Federal
Tribal (usability is dependent on the size of the tribal geography)
State
Regional (intrastate region)
County (for comparisons)

Context

Why was the index developed?

To identify and map the communities that will most likely need support before, during, and after a hazardous event

Who is the data steward's intended audience?

Public Health Officials and Emergency Response Planners

How does the data steward envision that data be used?

Allocate emergency preparedness funding by community need.
Estimate the amount and type of needed supplies such as food, water, medicine, and bedding.
Decide how many emergency personnel are required to assist people.
Identify areas in need of emergency shelters.
Create a plan to evacuate people, accounting for those who have special needs, such as those without vehicles, the elderly, or people who do not understand English well.
Identify communities that will need continued support to recover following an emergency or natural disaster.

What are the known limitations of this index?

Utilizes uniform formulas and variables across the coverage area; it does not consider community-specific variables.
The interpretation is limited to the variable included in the analysis.
Does not include the prevalence or existence of hazards in the vulnerability equation, only social factors. Therefore, this index should be used in conjunction with hazard information.
Provides a single snapshot of a community. Multiple events and duration of events may further impact a community’s vulnerability at a given time.
The resulting index is only as relevant as the underlying datasets and the date at which the index was compiled. Further, the relevancy dates of the underlying datasets could be a limitation.