This chapter summarizes key contributions and advances in the empirical estimation of disaster resilience. It begins by characterizing core theoretical and definitional distinctions, including reliability versus resilience, mitigation versus resilience, adaptive versus inherent resilience, and static versus dynamic resilience. It then characterizes core contextual considerations that shape empirical estimation, including unit of analysis and sector considerations. Core resilience metrics are summarized in a way that presents a straightforward mapping between metrics and contextual applications. It then provides a concise summary of key empirical advances across a wide range of empirical methodologies, with a major focus at the microeconomic level. Finally, the chapter offers an application to illustrate how these concepts establish a solid foundation for analysis by providing a synopsis of some of the authors’ own recent and ongoing research using survey-based and econometric approaches to estimate resilience cost and effectiveness metrics at the microeconomic level.

Dormady, Noah and Rose, Adam and Morin, Charles and Morin, Charles, Advances in the Empirical Estimation of Disaster Resilience (October 1, 2021). Skidmore, Mark (Ed.). Handbook on the Economics of Natural Disasters. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Press., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3935957