Natural hazards, such as bushfires, cyclones, floods, storms, heatwaves, earthquakes and tsunamis, have always occurred and will continue to occur in Australia. These natural hazards frequently intersect with human societies to create natural hazard emergencies that, in turn, cause disasters.

The effects of natural hazards on Australian communities are influenced by a unique combination of social, economic, natural environment, built environment, governance and geographical factors.

Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from natural hazards, with the total economic cost of natural hazards in Australia averaging $18.2 billion per year between 2006 and 2016 (Deloitte Access Economics, 2017). This is expected to almost double by 2030 and to average $33 billion per year by 2050 (Deloitte Access Economics, 2016). The social impacts of disasters are also substantial. Costs associated with social impacts may persist over a person’s lifetime and can be greater than the costs of tangible damages (Deloitte Access Economics, 2016).

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of some natural hazard types in Australia (BOM & CSIRO, 2018). An increasing population, demographic change, widening socio-economic disparity, expensive infrastructure and the location of communities in areas of high natural hazard risk also contributes to the potential for increasing losses from natural hazards.

There are two prominent schools of thought about the influence of natural hazards in human societies:

• a vulnerability perspective, where distributional inequalities in physical, social, economic and environmental factors influence the susceptibility of people to harm and the ability of people to respond to hazards (Cutter et al., 2003; Birkmann, 2006; Bankoff, 2019).
• a resilience perspective, where people are learning to live with a changing, unpredictable and uncertain environment (Folke et al., 2002; Bankoff, 2019), of which natural hazards are a part. Resilience is a process linking a set of capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance (Norris et al., 2008).

This resilience perspective has been adopted in the Australian Disaster Resilience Index, with the aim of better understanding and assessing the disaster resilience of Australian communities nationwide.

As such, disaster resilience can be understood as a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazards. Resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events.

Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from natural disasters. Disaster resilience is a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazard events. Disaster resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events. This assessment of disaster resilience estimates the status of these capacities and shows how they are spatially distributed across Australia.
Composite indices are frequently used to summarize and report complex relational measurements about a particular issue. The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index measures disaster resilience as a set of coping and adaptive capacities. Coping capacity is the means by which available resources and abilities can be used to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster. Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation. Eight themes of disaster resilience encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access) or to adapt, learn and solve problems (social and community engagement, governance and leadership). Across the eight themes, 77 indicators were used to compute the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index in 2084 areas of Australia, corresponding to the Statistical Area Level 2 divisions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The index was then used to undertake the first nationally standardised assessment of the state of disaster resilience in Australia. Disaster resilience is reported at three levels: an overall disaster resilience index, coping and adaptive capacity sub-indexes and themes of disaster resilience that encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards and to adapt, learn and solve problems (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access, social and community engagement, governance and leadership).
Volume I (this volume) assesses the state of disaster resilience in Australia, using the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index. Volume I gives a brief overview of the design and computation of the index, then assesses the state of disaster resilience in Australia at different levels: overall disaster resilience, coping and adaptive capacity, and the eight themes of disaster resilience. Volume I also presents a typology of disaster resilience that groups areas across Australia that have similar disaster resilience profiles.
Readers interested in the results of the assessment of disaster resilience in Australia should focus on Volume I.

Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from natural disasters. Disaster resilience is a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazard events. Disaster resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events. This assessment of disaster resilience estimates the status of these capacities and shows how they are spatially distributed across Australia.
Composite indices are frequently used to summarize and report complex relational measurements about a particular issue. The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index measures disaster resilience as a set of coping and adaptive capacities. Coping capacity is the means by which available resources and abilities can be used to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster. Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation. Eight themes of disaster resilience encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access) or to adapt, learn and solve problems (social and community engagement, governance and leadership). Across the eight themes, 77 indicators were used to compute the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index in 2084 areas of Australia, corresponding to the Statistical Area Level 2 divisions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The index was then used to undertake the first nationally standardised assessment of the state of disaster resilience in Australia. Disaster resilience is reported at three levels: an overall disaster resilience index, coping and adaptive capacity sub-indexes and themes of disaster resilience that encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards and to adapt, learn and solve problems (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access, social and community engagement, governance and leadership).
Volume II (this volume) describes in detail the computation of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index. This includes resilience concepts, literature review, index structure, data collection, indicators, statistical methods, detailed statistical outputs, sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analyses.
Readers interested in the technical aspects of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index should also consider Volume II. Volume II is comprised of six chapters:
Chapter 1: Design of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index
Chapter 2: Indicators
Chapter 3: Computation of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index
Chapter 4: Statistical outputs: ANDRI, coping capacity and adaptive capacity
Chapter 5: Statistical outputs: disaster resilience themes
Chapter 6: Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis

Natural hazard management policy directions in Australia – and indeed internationally – are increasingly being aligned to ideas of resilience. However, the definition and conceptualization of resilience in relation to natural hazards is keenly contested within academic literature (Klein et al., 2003; Wisner et al., 2004; Boin et al., 2010; Tierney, 2014). Broadly speaking, resilience to natural hazards is the ability of individuals and communities to cope with disturbances or changes and to maintain adaptive behaviour (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008). Building resilience to natural hazards requires the capacity to cope with the event and its aftermath, as well as the capacity to learn about hazard risks, change behaviour, transform institutions and adapt to a changing environment (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008).
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index is a tool for assessing the resilience of communities to natural hazards at a large scale. Using a top down approach, the assessment will provide input to macro-level policy, strategic planning, community planning and community engagement activities at National, State and local government levels. First, it is a snapshot of the current state of natural hazard resilience at a national scale. Second, it is a layer of information for use in strategic policy development and planning. Third, it provides a benchmark against which to assess future change in resilience to natural hazards. Understanding resilience strengths and weaknesses will help communities, governments and organizations to build the capacities needed for living with natural hazards.
Design of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index will assess resilience based on two sets of capacities – coping capacity and adaptive capacity. We have used a hierarchical structure for the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index. Indicators provide the data for a theme – together the indicators measure the status of the theme. We collected approximately 90 indicators across the eight coping and adaptive capacity themes. Indicators were collected at Statistical Area 2 (SA2) resolution where possible.
Results of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index
The results and initial trends in the eight themes of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index are presented below. It should be noted that these interpretations and maps are subject to further change as the State of Disaster Resilience Report is developed. What is presented here is an overview of the pattern of index values. In all maps, lower index values in brown represent lower disaster resilience and higher index values in green represent higher disaster resilience. Each of the sections is an SA2 division of the ABS.

What is the Problem?
In 2010, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) adopted resilience as one of the key guiding principles for making the nation safer. The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (Australian Government 2011) outlines how Australia should aim to improve social and community resilience with the view that resilient communities are in a much better position to withstand adversity and to recover more quickly from extreme events. The recent Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also uses resilience as a key concept and calls for a people centred, multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach to disaster risk reduction. As such each tier of government, emergency services and related NGOs have a distinct need to be able assess and monitor the ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters as well as a clear baseline condition from which to measure progress.
Why is it Important?
Society has always been susceptible to extreme events. While the occurrence of these events generally cannot be prevented; the risks can often be minimised and the impacts on affected populations and property reduced. For people and communities, the capacity to cope with, adapt to, learn from, and where needed transform behaviour and social structures in response to an event and its aftermath all reduce the impact of the disaster (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008) and can broadly be considered resilience. Improving resilience at various scales and thereby reducing the effects of natural hazards has increasingly become a key goal of governments, organisations and communities within Australia and internationally.
How are we going to solve it?
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project intends to produce a spatial representation of the current state of disaster resilience across Australia. The index will be composed of multiple levels of information that can be reported separately and represented as colour-coded maps where each point will have a corresponding set of information about natural hazard resilience. Spatially explicit capture of data (i.e. in a Geographical Information System) will facilitate seamless integration with other types of information and mapping and allow the use of the project outcomes in the preparation, prevention and recovery spheres. Additionally, the index and indicators will be drawn together as a State of Disaster Resilience Report which will interpret resilience at multiple levels and highlight hotspots of high and low elements of natural hazard resilience.

What is the Problem?
In 2010, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) adopted resilience as one of the key guiding principles for making the nation safer. The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (Australian Government 2011) outlines how Australia should aim to improve social and community resilience with the view that resilient communities are in a much better position to withstand adversity and to recover more quickly from extreme events. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also uses resilience as a key concept and calls for a people centred, multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach to disaster risk reduction. As such each tier of government, emergency services and related NGOs have a distinct need to be able assess and monitor the ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters as well as a clear baseline condition from which to measure progress.
Why is it Important?
Society has always been susceptible to extreme events. While the occurrence of these events generally cannot be prevented; the risks can often be minimised and the impacts on affected populations and property reduced. For people and communities, the capacity to cope with, adapt to, learn from, and where needed transform behaviour and social structures in response to an event and its aftermath all reduce the impact of the disaster and can broadly be considered resilience. Improving resilience and thereby reducing the effects of natural hazards has increasingly become a key goal of governments, organisations and communities within Australia and internationally.
How are we going to solve it?
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project will produce a spatial representation of the current state of disaster resilience across Australia. The index will be composed of multiple levels of information that can be reported separately and represented as colour-coded maps where each point will have a corresponding set of information about natural hazard resilience. Spatially explicit capture of data will facilitate seamless integration of the project outcomes with other types of information. The index and indicators will also be drawn together as a State of Disaster Resilience Report which will interpret resilience at multiple levels and highlight hotspots of high and low elements of natural hazard resilience.

What is the Problem?
In 2010, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) adopted resilience as one of the key guiding principles for making the nation safer. The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (Australian Government 2011) outlines how Australia should aim to improve social and community resilience with the view that resilient communities are in a much better position to withstand adversity and to recover more quickly from extreme events. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also uses resilience as a key concept and calls for a people centred, multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach to disaster risk reduction. As such each tier of government, emergency services and related NGOs have a distinct need to be able assess and monitor the ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters as well as a clear baseline condition from which to measure progress.
Why is it Important?
Society has always been susceptible to extreme events. While the occurrence of these events generally cannot be prevented; the risks can often be minimised and the impacts on affected populations and property reduced. For people and communities, the capacity to cope with, adapt to, learn from, and where needed transform behaviour and social structures in response to an event and its aftermath all reduce the impact of the disaster and can broadly be considered resilience. Improving resilience and thereby reducing the effects of natural hazards has increasingly become a key goal of governments, organisations and communities within Australia and internationally.
How are we going to solve it?
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project will produce a spatial representation of the current state of disaster resilience across Australia. The index will be composed of multiple levels of information that can be reported separately and represented as colour-coded maps where each point will have a corresponding set of information about natural hazard resilience. Spatially explicit capture of data will facilitate seamless integration of the project outcomes with other types of information. The index and indicators will also be drawn together as a State of Disaster Resilience Report which will interpret resilience at multiple levels and highlight hotspots of high and low elements of natural hazard resilience.

The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index (ANDRI) is Australia's first national-scale standardised snapshot of disaster resilience. Because of its national extent, the ANDRI takes a top-down approach using indicators derived from secondary data. The ANDRI has a hierarchical design based on coping and adaptive capacities representing the potential for disaster resilience in Australian communities. Coping capacity is the means by which people or organizations use available resources, skills and opportunities to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster. Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation. Coping capacity is divided into themes of social character, economic capital, infrastructure and planning, emergency services, community capital and information and engagement. Adaptive capacity is divided into themes of governance, policy and leadership and social and community engagement. Indicators are collected to determine the status of each theme. This paper will present a preliminary assessment of the state of disaster resilience in Australia, and the spatial distribution of disaster resilience across Australia. We then outline the framing of the assessment outcomes as areas of strength and opportunities for enhancing the capacities for disaster resilience in Australian communities. The utilisation of the ANDRI into emergency management agency programs and tools will also be discussed.

Australia faces increasing losses from natural hazard events. Resilient communities will be better able to anticipate hazards, withstand adversity, reduce losses and adapt and learn in a changing environment. The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index is a system to assess and report the resilience of Australian communities to natural hazards.

Resilient communities are better able to anticipate hazards, withstand adversity, reduce losses and recover from natural hazard events. The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index is a system of indicators that will assess and report the resilience of Australian communities to natural hazards.

Natural hazard management policy directions in Australia – and indeed internationally – are increasingly being aligned to ideas of resilience. There are many definitions of resilience in relation to natural hazards within a contested academic discourse (Klein et al., 2003; Wisner et al., 2004; Boin et al., 2010; Tierney, 2014). Broadly speaking, resilience to natural hazards is the ability of individuals and communities to cope with disturbances or changes and to maintain adaptive behaviour (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008). Building resilience to natural hazards requires the capacity to cope with the event and its aftermath, as well as the capacity to learn about hazard risks, change behaviour, transform institutions and adapt to a changing environment (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008). The shift from a risk-based approach to managing natural hazards towards ideas of disaster resilience reflects the uncertainty associated with predicting the location and impacts of natural hazard events, the inevitability of natural hazard events, and the uncertainty of future natural hazard risks in a changing climate and population.
The emergency management community sits at the forefront of operationalizing ideas of disaster resilience. Australia’s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience champions a resilience based approach to the challenges posed by natural hazards. Emergency management and other government agencies involved in hazard management are also adopting principles of natural hazard resilience in policies, strategic planning and community engagement (e.g. Queensland Reconstruction Authority, 2012). It is in light of the need to operationalize the concept of disaster resilience that we are developing the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.
The index is a tool for assessing the resilience of communities to natural hazards at a large scale. It is designed specifically to assess resilience to natural hazards – not derived for another purpose then modified to suit a resilience focus. The assessment inputs in several ways to macro-level policy, strategic planning, community planning and community engagement activities at National, State and local government levels. First, it is a snapshot of the current state of natural hazard resilience at a national scale. Second, it is a layer of information for use in strategic policy development and planning. Third, it provides a benchmark against which to assess future change in resilience to natural hazards. Understanding resilience strengths and weaknesses will help communities, governments and organizations to build the capacities needed for living with natural hazards.
There are two principal approaches to assessing disaster resilience using an index. Bottom-up approaches are locally based and locally driven and are qualitative self-assessments of disaster resilience (Committee on Measures of Community Resilience, 2015). Bottom-up approaches survey individuals or communities using a scorecard consisting of indicators of disaster resilience such as preparation, exposure to specific hazards, community resources and communication (e.g. Arbon, 2014). In contrast, top-down approaches are often intended for use at broad scales by an oversight body (Committee on Measures of Community Resilience, 2015) and use secondary spatial sources such as census data to quantitatively derive indicators that describe the inherent characteristics of a community that contribute to disaster resilience (Cutter et al., 2010). It is important to align the approach used with the purpose of the resilience assessment because bottom-up and top-down approaches both have a point of spatial or conceptual limitation beyond which conclusions about resilience are no longer valid. A framework that outlines the philosophical underpinnings of a project, linked to the mechanisms used to collect and interpret data, can help to scope and define relevant assessment approaches. A framework is an important tool for a resilience assessment because it defines the boundaries - the why, what and how - around the evidence that we use to derive our assessment of natural hazard resilience.
In this document we set out the framework for the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index. The framework outlines the conceptual underpinnings of our approach – why we are doing what we are doing – then explains what we will assess about resilience using data aligned to our resilience philosophy. We then briefly explain how we intend to measure these data and the indicators that we will collect to form the index.

This paper reports a national-scale assessment of disaster resilience, using the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. The index assesses resilience at three levels: overall capacity for disaster resilience; coping and adaptive capacity; and, eight themes of disaster resilience across social, economic and institutional domains. About 32% of Australia's population (7.6 million people) live in an area assessed as having high capacity for disaster resilience. About 52% of Australia's population (12.3 million people) live in an area assessed as having moderate capacity for disaster resilience. The remaining 16% of Australia's population (3.8 million people) live in an area assessed as having low capacity for disaster resilience. Distribution of disaster resilience in Australia is strongly influenced by a geography of remoteness. Most metropolitan and inner regional areas were assessed as having high capacity for disaster resilience. In contrast, most outer regional, remote and very remote areas were assessed as having low capacity for disaster resilience, although areas of low capacity for disaster resilience can occur in metropolitan areas. Juxtaposed onto this distribution, themes of disaster resilience highlight strengths and barriers to disaster resilience in different communities. For example, low community capital and social cohesion is a disaster resilience barrier in many metropolitan areas, but higher community capital and social cohesion in outer regional and some remote areas supports disaster resilience. The strategic intent of a shared responsibility for disaster resilience can benefit from understanding the spatial distribution of disaster resilience, so that policies and programmes can address systemic influences on disaster resilience.

The Australian natural disaster resilience index (ANDRI) will assess the state of disaster resilience in Australia.

The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index is an assessment of disaster resilience at a large, all-of-nation scale. It is the first national snapshot of the capacity for community resilience to natural hazards.
The conceptual model outlining the reasoning and design of the index has been reported previously in two publications:
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Milestone report on conceptual framework and indicator approach. Available from:
http://www.bnhcrc.com.au/research/resilient-people-infrastructure-andinstitutions/251
An academic manuscript titled “Top-down assessment of disaster resilience: a conceptual framework using coping and adaptive capacities”. This is available in open access from the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
This report overviews the indicators being used in the index, including their justification, source and measurement level. Once the data for all indicators have been collected and compiled, statistical analysis will then commence to compute the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.