The Torrens Resilience Institute Framework

The Torrens Resilience Institute (TRI) framework (TRI 2012, 2015) is one of the 39 frameworks and approaches adopted by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI 2016) on resilience measurement and is appropriate for use in a small island community. Developed at Flinders University in Australia, the framework is designed to strengthen local communities against disasters by enabling them to determine their level of resilience to adverse situations in terms of: 1) connectedness of the people in a community; 2) level of risk and vulnerability of a community; 3) procedures that support community disaster planning, response, and recovery; and 4) emergency planning, response, and recovery resources that are available. These factors are used to measure community disaster readiness and to strengthen planning for extreme events to determine whether the community/island is in the Red Zone, Caution Zone, or Going Well Zone based on the total scores of a 5-point Likert Scale rating for the indicators (Fig. 2).

The TRI resilience evaluation framework used in this study

If the overall score is within the Going Well Zone, the community is extremely resilient to any disaster; but if the overall score is within the Red Zone the community is more likely to experience adverse impacts from a disaster. Significantly lower scores in one indicator signal that area should be the priority for community action, although all scores are useful in highlighting areas of resilience that require attention from community members, leaders, and decision-makers (TRI 2015).