IIASA is a long-standing member of the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, an innovative partnership between humanitarian, NGO, research, and private sector partners working to build resilience to climate hazards in a wide range of rural and urban contexts around the world.
Formerly called the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, the Alliance holds over a decade of experience in generating evidence of communities’ disaster and climate resilience and identifying appropriate solutions. Through long-term community programs, new research, and stakeholder influencing, the Alliance strives to deliver systemic change at scale and to realize a vision of a world in which communities are more resilient to climate hazards and able to thrive.
The multi-year partnership is powered by the Zurich Foundation and includes Zurich Insurance along with the humanitarian, development, and research NGOs Practical Action, the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), Concern Worldwide, Mercy Corps, Plan International, and ISET-International, as well as IIASA and the London School of Economics (LSE) as research partners.
Since 2013, the Alliance has worked with communities around the world to measure and then increase their flood resilience. In its first phase (2013-2017), the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance focused on shifting efforts from the traditional focus on post-event recovery to pre-event flood risk reduction and resilience-building actions. More than 110 communities with over 225,000 direct beneficiaries in nine countries have benefited from alliance projects supported by strong scientific evidence on the value of pre-event action from IIASA and other research partners. The second phase from (2018-2024) focused on up-scaling community resilience to unlock new and innovative pathways and finance for boosting community resilience in another 15 countries through community-level interventions and cutting-edge research. Overall, the Alliance has worked in and with more than 500 communities in 5 countries.
The current third phase, focuses more strongly on a systems change approach to deliver transformational impact at a greater scale, applying the flood resilience methodology to multiple climate hazards including floods, heatwaves, and wildfires as we are expanding to other country and communities.
Overall, the Alliance's work has beneficially impacted the lives of over 3 million people and influenced an increase in resilience spending of more than US$1.25 billion. Drawing on this experience, the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance aims to beneficially impact the lives of 5.5 million people by 2027, and 70 million people by 2035.
IIASA research focus
As a key research partner in the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, IIASA applies both hard and soft systems science to inform the development of community-based flood resilience strategies and break new ground towards systemic and transformational adaptation as part of development-centric climate-adaptation strategies. IIASA's work focuses on understanding and measuring resilience, enhancing decision-making, and supporting advocacy and policy.
Understanding resilience
Understanding and measuring resilience has involved generating understanding for the scope of resilience framings and co-generating a development-centric definition of resilience involving "The ability of a system, community, or society to pursue its social, ecological, and economic development and growth objectives while managing its climate risks over time in a mutually reinforcing way."
Keating, A., Mechler, R., Mochizuki, J. , Kunreuther, H., Bayer, J., Hanger, S., McCallum, I. , See, L., Williges, K., Hochrainer-Stigler, S. et al. (2014). Operationalizing Resilience Against Natural Disaster Risk: Opportunities, Barriers, and a Way Forward. Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance
Keating, A., Campbell, K., Mechler, R., Magnuszewski, P., Mochizuki, J., Liu, W., Szoenyi, M., McQuistan, C. (2017). Disaster resilience: What it is and how it can engender a meaningful change in development policy. Development Policy Review 35 (1): 65-91
Keating, A., Campbell, K., Szoenyi, M., McQuistan, C., Nash, D. & Burer, M. (2017). Development and testing of a community flood resilience measurement tool. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions 17 (1), 77-101. 10.5194/nhess-17-77-2017
Mochizuki, J. , Keating, A., Liu, W. , Hochrainer-Stigler, S. & Mechler, R. (2018). An overdue alignment of risk and resilience? A conceptual contribution to community resilience. Disasters 42 (2), 361-391. 10.1111/disa.12239
Keating, A. & Hanger-Kopp, S. (2020). Practitioner perspectives of disaster resilience in international development. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 42, e101355. 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101355
Measuring and validating resilience
IIASA co-created the FRMC and CRMC resilience measurement tools based on a systems-thinking approach for capturing the full potential of communities and understanding local resilience characteristics at larger scales. The FRMC framework is operationalized by an indicator-based approach, where each “source” is an indicator measuring a discrete pre-event characteristic thought to contribute to community flood resilience. Each source is assigned to one of the five capitals/capacities:
- human
- financial
- social
- natural or
- physical
Measurement through community knowledge work happens at base-and endline stages as well as after after disaster events.
IIASA leads the FRMC validation process, which involves means to discern evidence that the sources of resilience contribute to improved resilience outcomes in case of a flood event and are reliably measured in a standardized way, and to synthesize feedback from users on the practicality or usability of the approach.
Campbell KA, Laurien F, Czajkowski J, et al (2019) First insights from the Flood Resilience Measurement Tool: A large-scale community flood resilience analysis. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 40:101257. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101257
Laurien, F. & Keating, A. (2019). Evidence from Measuring Community Flood Resilience in Asia. ADB Economics Working Paper Series, no. 595. 10.22617/WPS190484-2
Hochrainer-Stigler S, Laurien F, Velev S, Keating A, & Mechler R (2020). Standardized disaster and climate resilience grading: A global scale empirical analysis of community flood resilience. Journal of Environmental Management 276: DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111332
Laurien F, Hochrainer-Stigler S, Keating A, Campbell K, Mechler R , & Czajkowski J (2020). A typology of community flood resilience. Regional Environmental Change 20 (1): e24. DOI:10.1007/s10113-020-01593-x
Hochrainer-Stigler, S., Velev S., Laurien F., Campbell KA, et al. (2021). The Dynamics of Disaster Resilience over Time: Insights from community assessments across the globe. Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 17625 (2021)
Enhancing decision making
IIASA has co-generated insights on decision making in the Alliance, undertaken country case explorations, and conducted innovative citizen science-driven mapping exercises.
Mechler, R. , Czajkowski, J., Kunreuther, H., Michel-Kerjan, E., Botzen, W., Keating, A., McQuistan, C., Cooper, N. & O'Donnell, I. (2014).Making Communities More Flood Resilient: The Role of Cost Benefit Analysis and Other Decision-support Tools in Disaster Risk Reduction. White Paper, Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (9 September 2014)
Mechler, R. , Czajkowski, J., Kunreuther, H., Michel-Kerjan, E., Botzen, W., Keating, A., McQuistan, C., Cooper, N. & O'Donnell, I. (2014). Risk Nexus : Making communities more flood resilient: The role of cost-benefit analysis and other decision-support tools. Issue Brief, Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, Zurich Insurance Company, Zurich, Switzerland (September 2014)
Mechler, R. (2016). Reviewing estimates of the economic efficiency of disaster risk management: opportunities and limitations of using risk-based cost–benefit analysis. Natural Hazards 81, 2121-212147. 10.1007/s11069-016-2170-y
Keating, A., Venkateswaran, K., Szoenyi, M., MacClune, K. & Mechler, R. (2016). From event analysis to global lessons: disaster forensics for building resilience. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 16, 1603-1616. 10.5194/nhess-2016-52.
McCallum, I., Liu, W. , See, L. , Mechler, R. , Keating, A., Hochrainer-Stigler, S., Mochizuki, J. , Fritz, S., Dugar, S., Arestegui, M. et al. (2016). Technologies to Support Community Flood Disaster Risk Reduction. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 7 (2), 198-204. 10.1007/s13753-016-0086-5
Mechler, R. & Hochrainer-Stigler, S. (2019). Generating Multiple Resilience Dividends from Managing Unnatural Disasters in Asia: Opportunities for Measurement and Policy. ADB Economics Working Paper Series, no.601. 10.22617/WPS190573-2
Mechler, R. , McQuistan, C., McCallum, I., Liu, W. , Keating, A., Magnuszewski, P., Schinko, T. , Laurien, F. & Hochrainer-Stigler, S. (2018). Supporting Climate Risk Management at Scale. Insights from the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance Partnership Model Applied in Peru & Nepal. In: Loss and Damage from Climate Change. Eds. Mechler, R. , Bouwer, L., Schinko, T. , Surminski, S. & Linnerooth-Bayer, J., pp. 393-424 Cham, Switzerland: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-72025-8 10.1007/978-3-319-72026-5_17
Deubelli, T. , Darby, L., Donia, D., Keating, A., von der Mühlen, M., McLoughlin, S., Williams, G. & Crawford, B. (2021). Inclusion and disaster resilience: Insights for gender and disability-inclusive disaster resilience-building. Flood Resilience Alliance
Yang, Y., Keating, A. & Sourn, C. (2024). Measuring community disaster resilience for sustainable climate change adaptation: Lessons from time‐series findings in rural Cambodia. Disasters, e12647. 10.1111/disa.12647
Paszkowski, A., Laurien, F. , Mechler, R. & Hall, J. (2024). Quantifying community resilience to riverine hazards in Bangladesh. Global Environmental Change 84, e102778. 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102778
Advocacy and policy
IIASA has also contributed cutting-edge research on decision making for flood risk reduction and resilience on transformational adaptation and on climate finance in the context of Loss and Damage.
Mechler, R. , Bower, L, Schinko, T. , Surminski, S. & Linnerooth-Bayer, J., eds. (2018). Loss and Damage from Climate Change: Concepts, Principles and Policy Options. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-72026-5
Mechler, R. & Deubelli, T. (2021). Finance for Loss and Damage: a comprehensive risk analytical approach. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 50, 185-196. 10.1016/j.cosust.2021.03.012.
Deubelli, T.M. & Mechler, R. (2021). Perspectives on transformational change in climate risk management and adaptation.Environmental Research Letters 16, e053002. 10.1088/1748-9326/abd42d.
McQuistan, C., Mechler, R. & Rosen Jacobson, B. (2022). Closing the gaps. A framework for understanding policies and actions to address losses and damages. Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance
Mechler, R. , McQuistan, C. & Rosen Jacobson, B. (2023). Falling through the gaps: how global failures to address the climate crisis are leading to increased losses and damages. Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance
Mechler, R., Deubelli-Hwang, T., Venkateswaran, K. eds. (2024). Disaster resilience & transformation. Science, practice and policy perspectives. Springer, Cham