About the Resilient-C Project

What is the goal of the Resilient-C platform?

The Resilient-C platform identifies communities that face similar coastal hazard vulnerabilities and provides them with opportunities to connect with each other and share knowledge, resources, and best practices for building coastal resilience. The Resilient-C platform is a project funded by the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network, a Network Centre of Excellence in Canada.

What is the HVSI (Hazards Similarity Vulnerability Index)?

To measure the similarity between different community's vulnerability profiles, the platform uses the HVSI (Hazard Vulnerability Similarity Index) to measure their similarity based on a multidimensional set of indicators related to socio-economic demographics and coastal hazards. Our indicator categories are divided into five distinct groups, representing different dimensions of vulnerability:

  • social capital,
  • economic capital,
  • institutional capital,
  • natural environment capital,
  • and built environment capital.

The similarity index (HVSI) is useful for:

  • Identifying other communities that share specific vulnerabilities (for example, all other communities with an aging population)
  • Discovering best practices that have been successfully implemented in communities with a similar profile to the user’s
  • Identifying gaps in disaster management planning
  • Identifying geospatial vulnerability clusters based on certain criteria
  • Encouraging partnerships and collaboration across communities to share lessons learned

Who is the Resilient-C Platform For?

The Resilient-C Platform allows users such as community planners, disaster management professionals, and members of local NGOs to identify other communities that face similar hazards and vulnerabilities as their own. The information displayed is based on census data and documented features of the natural environment. The platform allows users to customize their searches and find communities that share the most similar vulnerability profile to their home community based on specifically chosen criteria. Users will also have access to additional tools and resources for hazard mitigation and building coastal resilience.

How Can the Platform Help Communities Build Resilience?

The vision of the platform is to support larger-scale coastal resilience. The platform can help planners, local government professionals, and other stakeholders to discover innovative coastal resilience plans that could be applicable to their own resilience-building efforts.

What is the next step for Resilient-C?

The platform is initially focused on the communities in the Strait of Georgia, and will be expanded to include coastal communities in the east coast of Canada and those in Washington State in the US.

Team Member Profiles

Stephanie Chang, PhD

Stephanie Chang, PhD

Dr. Chang is a professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, with the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES). She has held a Canada Research Chair in Disaster Management and Urban Sustainability (Tier 2, 2004-2013). Dr. Chang has published extensively on the socio-economic impact of natural disasters, modeling disaster losses, urban risk dynamics, critical infrastructure systems and interdependencies, economic evaluation of disaster mitigations, and disaster recovery. She has served on the U.S. National Research Council’s Committee on Disaster Research in the Social Sciences and its Committee on Earthquake Resilience – Research, Implementation, and Outreach.