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Applicability of Extra-Local Methods for Assessing Community Resilience to Disasters : A Case of Sri Lanka

Information Science and Control Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1, Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata, 940-2188, Japan

E-mail Address: s147010@stn.nagaokaut.ac.jp

Corresponding author.

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Mikami Yoshiki

Department of Management and Information Systems Science, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata, 940-2188, Japan

E-mail Address: mikami@kjs.nagaokaut.ac.jp

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Ashu Marasinghe

Department of Management and Information Systems Science, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata, 940-2188, Japan

E-mail Address: ashu@kjs.nagaokaut.ac.jp

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Yukawa Takashi

Department of Management and Information Systems Science, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata, 940-2188, Japan

E-mail Address: yukawa@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp

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, and

Iwahashi Masahiro

Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1, Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata, 940-2188, Japan

E-mail Address: iwahashi@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S1464333216500101Cited by:9 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

This paper is focused on a practice that has been widely noted in South Asia, i.e. employing extra-local methods to assess community resilience with no or minimal attempts on localising. The objective of this paper is to assess the consistency/inconsistency and concordance/discordance of resilience levels computed by different extra-local assessment methods with reference to a Sri Lankan case. Community resilience levels were computed for 40 localities with three methods utilising secondary data. Statistical analysis revealed neither strong correlation ( $r \geq 0.574$ ), ( $p < 0.01$ ) or strong reliability (ICC $= 0.481$ ) among the computed resilience levels, indicating inconsistency and discordance. The findings explained how the randomly selected extra-local assessment methods could produce different values. Hence, can the resilience building decisions based on such assessment methods also be inconsistent? This study suggests decision makers should revisit the practice of employing non-localised extra-local assessment methods without addressing the context-specific resilience building needs profoundly.

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