Seeking commonalities of community resilience to natural hazards: A cluster analysis approach
The aim of the study was to identify groups of communities with similar resilience profiles, using Norwegian municipalities as a case. The authors used a set of socioeconomic and environmental indicators as measures of municipalities’ resilience and performed a cluster analysis to divide the municipalities into groups with similar multivariate resilience signatures.
The authors conclude that:
- municipalities in each of the groups shared aspects that made them either more or less resilient to natural hazards, which could make them potential targets for shared interventions;
- clustering can be used to identify municipalities with similar resilience features and that could benefit from networking and sharing operational planning as a way to improve their respective communities' resilience to natural hazards;
- decision-makers and practitioners in the field of disaster preparedness and management could benefit from having an overview of the geographies of regions comprising municipalities with similar resilience signatures, as specific measures could be targeted at groups of geographically near municipalities that have similar needs in terms of certain resilience indicators.