Community Disaster Resilience Index

The Community Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) is a survey-based, multi-level composite-index method for assessing the resilience of communities to disasters, developed in the action-oriented form by Jonas Joerin, Rajib Shaw, Yukiko Takeuchi, and Ramasamy Krishnamurthy and applied in Chennai, India. CDRI decomposes resilience into a hierarchy: a small set of dimensions (commonly physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural), each split into parameters, each measured by several variables scored on a Likert scale. Variables are combined into parameter scores, parameters into dimension scores, and dimensions into an overall index, with weights typically elicited from stakeholders or experts. Unlike secondary-data indices, CDRI is built to be participatory and diagnostic — its purpose is to reveal which dimension of resilience is weakest in a given community so that action can be targeted there.