strategic resilience assessment webinarv2

STRATEGIC
RESILIENCE
ASSESSMENTS
applying a resilience lens to development
strategies and programs
Regional Resilience Director – South and East Asia

OLGA PETRYNIAK

APPLYING STRATEGIC RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS

Conceptualizing Resilience
STRESS Overview
Examples of Application

APPLYING STRATEGIC RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS

Conceptualizing Resilience

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Conceptualizing Resilience

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Resilience Questions
SYSTEMS

PEOPLE

CAPACITIES

SHOCKS/ STRESSES
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Resilience For What?:
Well-Being Outcomes
Meaningful
employment
maintained or
improved

Income
stability and
growth

Dietary
diversity
maintained
and improved

Access to
health services
maintained or
improved

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APPLYING STRATEGIC RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS

Conceptual Framework

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Resilience Capacities
• Ability of people,
communities and systems
to achieve improved wellbeing in the face of
shocks and stresses
RESOURCES

STRATEGIES

APPLYING STRATEGIC RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS

What defines a resilience
capacity?

Resource or its use that helps a household, community, or system,
prevent, mitigate, or respond to a risk
Shock/stress: The shock or stress (risk) it is used against
User: The group, individual, or institution intended to "use" the capacity
Provider: Individuals, processes or systems appropriate for providing
access or availability of the capacity
Effect: The mitigating impact of the capacity on the shock/stress and
positive effect on household/community/system
Development Links: Which changes in the development context are
required to support and sustain access and use to the capacity?

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Resilience Capacities

STRESS
Overview

APPLYING STRATEGIC RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS

What is a STRESS?
 A strategic-level assessment process for
understanding risk, drivers and required capacities
to build resilience in a given context
 helps develop effective, measurable resiliencebuilding strategies
 considers the complex interactions that exist
between risks, people and the socio-ecological
systems in which they live
 anchored in the five resilience questions

What’s unique about a STRESS?
SYSTEMSFOCUSED

SECTORNEUTRAL

MULTIPLE
SCALES

MULTIPLE
TIME FRAMES

ANALYSIS OF
RISKS AND RISK
PROFILES

ANALYSIS OF
RESILIENCE
CAPACITIES

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STRESS Phases:
Scope: Review team and expert 
knowledge through participatory 

workshops and identify knowledge gaps
Inform: Conduct secondary literature 
review; complement with qualitative field 
methods
Analyze: develop risk profiles and 
evaluate resilience capacities
Strategize: develop a resilience­
focused, measurable theory of change

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Phase 1: SCOPE
Determine the purpose, 
scope and scale
Gather collective knowledge 
through workshops and rapid 
literature review
Conduct systems mapping
Identify knowledge gaps

Prepare data collection plan

Systems
Mapping
RESILIENCE OF
WHAT?

Land
Conditions

Water
Availability

Gender
Norms

Farm
Production
Consumption
Practices

Food
Security

Gender
Norms

Income

Non-farm
livelihoods

Finance
Markets

Government
Regulation

RESILIENCE TO WHAT?

Shocks and Stresses

Excess
Rain +

Drought +

Floods +

Land & Water
Availability -

Conflict +

Farming
Production Food price
shocks +

Income Stress
migration +
Emergency
borrowing +

Debt +

RESILIENCE OF WHAT?

Urban Systems
Migrant
incomes
Labor pool

Coastal
Storm
Stress
Migration+
Flood +

Health
Business
Income &
Investment

Government
Priorities and
Practices

Food
Price
Shocks

Pressure on
Infrastructure
and services

Urban
Planning

Marginal
Land
Conversion

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Phase 1: Scoping
Outputs
1) A preliminary systems analysis defining
interaction between:
• development or systemic
constraints
• shocks and stresses
• gendered impacts
2) A preliminary understanding of
resilience capacities – current and
potential
3) A detailed research plan that identifies
key knowledge gaps, primary data
collection methods, and a sampling
strategy.

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Phase 2:
INFORM
Data collection should be focused 
and narrowed 
Fit for purpose, time and scale:
Focus on knowledge gaps:
Draw on existing tools and methods:
•

Secondary Data review

•

Qualitative interviews

•

Quantitative Survey

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ASSESSMENTS

Phase 3:
ANALYZE
KEY DELIVERABLES: 
Development trends, with focus on 
systemic relationships 
Risk Analysis: 

•
•
•

Shocks/stresses to systems and target 
populations
Risk drivers and impacts
Risk profiles of target populations

Resilience Capacity Analysis:

•
•

Existing v. required resilience 
capacities; 
Underlying factors preventing access 
and use of resilience capacities

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Phase 4:
STRATEGIZE
KEY DELIVERABLES: 
Theory of Change
M&E Framework
Resilience­building 
strategies/logic chains

STRESS Deliverables:
Risk
Profile

• Trends and interactions between shocks and
stresses, and system dynamics

Resilience
Capacities

• Existing and required resources – social, physical,
financial, natural, political, human- and how they
must be applied to mitigate risk

Theory of
Change

• A high-level logical pathway defining the
relationship how resilience capacities can support
achieving well-being outcomes in the face of risk

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STRESS
EXAMPLES

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Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)
Large USAID­funded multi­sector 
program addressing food insecurity in 
Mid and Far West of Nepal (50­60% 
stunting rates)
80% reliance on agricultural livelihoods
Topography exacerbates service 
delivery challenges, market constraints
High debt rates
High rates of migration as coping 
strategy – 3,000/day; concentrations of 
women with increased work load
Strict gender and caste norms

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Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)
Risk
Reduction
Infrastructure
and Systems

WASH
Infrastructure
and Practices
Food
Utilisation

Health and
Nutrition
practices

Sustainable
Food
Security

Food
Availability

Supply
System

Natural
Resources

Stability

Food
Access

Food
Production

Land
Productivity

NRM

Income
AG
Practices

Non-AG
Enterprises

Migratio
n

CREDIT, TVET
and BDS
Economic
Infrastructur
e

Markets

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Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)

Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)

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Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)
KEY FINDINGS:
Access to key resources is insufficient 
to determine resilience; use is critical 
and relies on a strong knowledge base 
and an enabling environment
– e.g. remittances, loans

Informal norms and formal rules and 
regulations are underlying factors that 
determine access and use of resilience 
capacities:
– e.g. caste norms around water, gender 
household decision­making

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Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)
THEORY OF CHANGE 
IMPLICATIONS
   Build voice and participation 
as part of underlying social 
and behavioral change 
strategy
   Strengthen cross­sectoral 
governance approach
   Foster social capital and 
networks

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Case 1: NEPAL (Rural)

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Case 2: CHENNAI (Urban)
CONTEXT
December 2015 floods displaced $1.8 
million and caused $7 billion in economic 
losses
Small and Medium Enterprises, who 
employ 360,000 and 3% of national GDP 
severely affected
Need to understand the systemic 
connections between urban environment 
and small business resilience
Local partner working on resilience with 
government and local stakeholders

CAUSAL SYSTEMS MAP: CHENNAI

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Capacities Systems Map: Chennai

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Case 2: CHENNAI (Urban)
KEY LESSONS:
 Chennai’s fragmented institutional and
infrastructure context creates challenges for
balancing economic growth with
environmental safeguards for resilience
 Damage and recovery, particularly for
MSMEs, depends as much on business
environment as it does on the intensity of
the disaster
 Financial products are often slow,
inaccessible or ill-designed for MSMEs,
undermining small business growth and
stability

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Case 3: MONGOLIA
(Urban-Rural)
CONTEXT
 Setting country-level strategy for a new legacy
program
 Focus not only on what program will work on
directly, but also partnership
 Need to understand urban-rural dynamics in light
of economic patterns and urbanization:
 Strong history of herding
 Mining growth after democratization
 Vulnerability to global commodity prices
 Rapid urbanization

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MONGOLIA: Urban-Rural

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Case 3: MONGOLIA
(Urban-Rural)
KEY FINDINGS:
 Rural livestock economy essential to balanced
growth:
 Perceptions and low services are driving
people to cities, not winter blizzards
 Requires YOUTH buy-in to rural livestock
economy
 Need to build social capital and networks
across urban-rural areas
 Simultaneous focus on urban and rural services
job growth
 Need for expanded partnerships

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Key Takeaways
 STRESS is an assessment
approach, not strict methodology
 Needs to be “fit to size” based on
purpose, scope and scale
 Focus on systems mapping in
relation to well-being outcomes, risk
analysis and resilience capacities
 Draw on existing knowledge
 Centered on multi-stakeholder
engagement and capacity

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For More Information
STRESS Approach, Mercy Corps, 2017
Resilience Measurement Practical Guidance Series; 
Guidance Note no. 1 – Risk and Resilience Assessments; USAID, TOPS
PAHAL Strategic Resilience Assessment, Nepal, April 2015
Transforming Chennai: Building micro, small and medium enterprise resi
lience to water related environmental change
. Okapi and Mercy Corps. December 2016.
Mongolia Strategic Resilience Assessment, Mercy Corps, April 2017; and 
Reuters Article
Urban Resilience Measurement, An Approach Guide and Training 
Curriculum.  Mercy Corps. June 2016.

Questions

OLGA PETRYNIAK
Regional Resilience Director
opetryniak@mercycorps.org