Statement 2

VALUING RESILIENCE:
SEEKING OPPORTUNITY FROM ACROSS THE LANDSCAPE

Statement 2: Valuing Resilience: seeking opportunity from across the landscape

Organisations seeking natural hazard and climate resilience can leverage a foundation of economic, social, governance and environmental focussed efforts.

The Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities established the Resilience Valuation Initiative (RVI) coalition. RVI is seeking to advance an accepted process with enabling methodologies for understanding the value of a resilience-building asset, network, feature or activity.

Summary:

This RVI statement describes the landscape of existing and emerging efforts contributing, or with the potential to contribute, to better valuing resilience and assesses existing and emerging tools and methodologies.

It provides valuable knowledge for stakeholders seeking to develop methods for, or to support, valuing resilience and demonstrates the need to connect across the landscape to build capacity and understanding .

A busy and evolving landscape

Our work has identified many initiatives, frameworks and standards, tools and methodologies and local research and knowledge providers contributing, or with the potential to contribute, to better valuing resilience. While not exhaustive and with a distinct focus on Australia, these have been included in Figure 1, along with identified opportunities for use. It is a busy and evolving landscape of efforts that can be challenging to navigate. They focus often on specific outcomes of the quadruple bottom line which can detract from a systemic view of resilience.

Identified efforts have generally been built on policy priorities of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction resilience and sustainability. Much of the early activity involves infrastructure. This area has been most ripe for change and an impactful lever to date to improve disaster resilience for the public and private sectors

Initiatives

Frameworks and Standards

Tools and Methodologies

Australian Research & Knowledge Providers

Sample usage opportunities

Initiatives

Initiatives captured in Figure 1 are either created by RVI stakeholders or uncovered during the desktop review. The range is broad. Some initiatives support international movements like Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement and policy guidance from international institutions like the World Bank. Others such as the Capitals Coalition and the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures aim to transform decision-making by encouraging and developing new resources that recognises risks and opportunities through a more holistic view of resilience. Initiatives such as the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment Recognising Natural Capital Program focusses on one contributing component to better valuing resilience.

The range of initiatives and participants demonstrates the level of effort and cross-sector collaboration needed to develop and drive mandatory or voluntary frameworks and standards and tools and methodologies.

Frameworks and standards

There is no disaster resilience standard-setting body to provide guidance on better valuing resilience. This makes it difficult to validate or verify that measures translate into real resilience benefits. However, there are international standards (e.g., ISO 3712) and accepted frameworks and tools focused on city resilience that may be adapted for organisational use.

However, as reflected in Figure 1, there are many different frameworks intended to provide structure and guidance. They are an important reference, however, generally operate at a high level and do not necessarily provide the specific indicators that public and private decision-makers desire in order to value resilience.

Tools and methodologies

We identified many tools and methodologies with the potential to support users to better value resilience – both established and emerging. These range in purpose from supporting corporate social impact reporting (e.g., Value-to-Society Method) to informing planner, policymaker and investor decisions on infrastructure (e.g., SAVi, UNHaRMED, AdaptXDI).

The different tools and methodologies were examined for a range of characteristics. This included how they align to characteristics of an ideal approach to value resilience identified in our first statement, their potential to contribute to our emerging approach for better valuing resilience, cost and availability

From this review and consultations with developers, RVI participants agree:

Australian research and knowledge providers

As the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements recently reiterated, “Australia has strong research and development capabilities in climate and natural disasters.” Publicly funded research agencies work together, in collaboration with universities through hubs and centres and with private sector-led initiatives. Similarly, the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) develops, maintains and shares knowledge and learning to support a disaster resilient Australia. These entities and the experts that drive them play a critical role in developing, testing and advancing tools and methodologies for better valuing resilience.

Recommendations for a way forward

This review provides a partial answer on the appropriateness of these tools and methodologies for RVI participants. Piloting resources will lead to a more detailed assessment.

Nonetheless, we know that practices need to transform to consider resilience in decision-making. RVI participants recommend specific actions to generate understanding and better application. Initial activity could include:

RVI participants want to drive resilience within their own organisation’s decisions. However, to enable more resilient systems, there is a need for an accepted process with enabling methodologies for understanding the value of a resilience-building asset, network, feature or activity.

About the Resilience Valuation Initiative

Participating organisations

AECOM CSIRO Minderoo Foundation
Arup Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet Munich Re
Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities Energy Networks Australia National Recovery and Resilience Agency
Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience EY Queensland Reconstruction Authority
Australian Red Cross Frasers Property Australia Resilient Projects
Australian Super Green Building Council of Australia Woolworths
Bushfire & Natural Hazards CRC IAG WWF-Australia
Climate-KIC Infrastructure Australia

The Resilience Valuation Initiative welcomes more organisations to participate in our testing or other parts of the work program.

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