Seeking commonalities of community resilience to natural hazards: A cluster analysis approach

Abstract

The aim of the study on which the article is based was to identify groups of communities with similar resilience profiles, using Norwegian municipalities as a case. The authors used a set of socioeconomic and environmental indicators as measures of municipalities’ resilience and performed a cluster analysis to divide the municipalities into groups with similar multivariate resilience signatures. The results revealed six groups of municipalities that, apart from their unique combinations of indicator scores, featured certain spatial patterns, such as an “urban cluster” with urbanized municipalities and a “suburban cluster” with municipalities concentrated around major cities. The authors conclude that municipalities in each of the groups shared aspects that made them either more or less resilient to natural hazards, which could make them potential targets for shared interventions. Additionally, the authors conclude that clustering can be used to identify municipalities with similar resilience features and that could benefit from networking and sharing operational planning as a way to improve their respective communities' resilience to natural hazards.