Measuring community resilience in Swedish municipalities

Abstract: All Swedish municipalities have planning tools such as a municipal action plan and a risk- and vulnerability assessment, which are governing documents on how to prepare, prevent and respond to accidents and crisis. However, there are no established methods for measuring community resilience in Sweden. Therefore, it could potentially be beneficial for Swedish municipalities to use a method for measuring community resilience. This paper analysed whether the concept resilience adds new perspectives to the work done with managing accidents and crisis, but also investigates whether the quantitative index method Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) can be used for measuring community resilience in Swedish municipalities. The research questions were investigated with the help of a selection of literature. Moreover, a questionnaire and interviews were conducted to understand if the concept resilience adds new perspectives for managing accidents and crises, and also if the BRIC method could provide relevant information for professionals working with accidents and crisis. The results in this thesis indicate that the BRIC method, and more specifically the included indicators could potentially complement the work done for managing accidents and crisis. However, the thesis could not determine with certainty whether the BRIC method would facilitate the work done with managing occurred events. Finally, the results in this thesis also indicate that the concept resilience does add new perspectives for managing accidents and crises in Sweden. However, there were some ambiguity in how the concepts adds new perspectives.