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Resilience is an approach to living with, managing, and adapting to aspects of change, complexity and uncertainty, including that arising from emergencies and disasters. A resilient community has the capacities and opportunities to: identify risk; absorb disruptive events and return to a functioning state; and, adapt or transform in anticipation of, or in response to, disruptive events. Community resilience arises from the ways that these capacities are valued, prioritised and addressed by community, government, business, and individual actions and activities - a so-called system of resilience. 

Disaster resilience is a new organising principle for the work that Australian emergency agencies undertake with communities. Agency programs directly or indirectly seek to enhance the capacities of communities to survive, thrive and adapt within a landscape of bushfires, floods, storms and cyclones. Yet agencies are also required to demonstrate the contribution that their programs make to disaster resilience.

A suite of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks and techniques are available to track the effectiveness of community engagement, and other programs. Many emergency management agencies in Australia, and other disaster-related organisations such as insurers, adopt these frameworks and techniques. Yet the challenge heard from practitioners is how to monitor and evaluate the contributions of programs to disaster resilience. Traditional measures of disaster resilience include preparedness, recovery and mitigation, but disaster resilience also encompasses aspects of communities such as connectedness, social capital, co-learning, participation, access, adaptation, behaviour change, diversity, governance and networks. Monitoring and evaluating therefore needs to address the impacts of programs on these aspects of disaster resilience. This endeavour is not unique to emergency management agencies: practitioners in climate change adaptation, international development, community development and environmental science are also developing ways to monitor and evaluate resilience outcomes.

There is no easy answer to the challenge of monitoring and evaluating programs for disaster resilience outcomes. This is partly because the adoption of resilience concepts into policy and programs is in its early stages, and partly because resilience thinking requires fundamental transformation in the design and implementation of community engagement programs, and the collection of data to track effectiveness. In essence, emergency agency practitioners and the communities they work with are themselves generating the new monitoring and evaluation frameworks, techniques, program designs and governance structures required to progress towards disaster resilience goals.

Emergency management agencies face the challenge of monitoring and evaluating the contribution of their programs for disaster resilience. However, given the diversity of legislative and strategic environments in Australia, the implementation of monitoring and evaluation frameworks will be unique to each agency.

This report is a self-reflective guide for taking program evaluation for disaster resilience outwards to examine progress and tracking towards goals of disaster resilience. 

Resilience is an approach to living with, managing,and adapting to aspects of change, complexityand uncertainty, including that arising fromemergencies and disasters. A resilient communityhas the capacities and opportunities to: identifyrisk; absorb disruptive events and return to afunctioning state; and, adapt or transform inanticipation of, or in response to, disruptive events.Community resilience arises from the waysthat these capacities are valued, prioritised andaddressed by community, government, business,and individual actions and activities – a so-calledsystem of resilience.Disaster resilience is a new organising principlefor the work that Australian emergency agenciesundertake with communities. Agency programsdirectly or indirectly seek to enhance the capacitiesof communities to survive, thrive and adaptwithin a landscape of bushfires, floods, stormsand cyclones. Yet agencies are also required todemonstrate the contribution that their programsmake to disaster resilience.