The Effect of Community Resilience and Disaster Risk Management Cycle Stages on Morbi-Mortality Following Floods: An Empirical Assessment

Abstract. Practice and policy have emphasised the need for building resilience to climate-related events in a further warming world. Scholarship has studied resilience largely in terms of process, latent capacity informing vulnerability, or outcome of risk management interventions, with little work integrating these perspectives. Implementation science work by the Climate Resilience Alliance has developed the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) process and tool to measure resilience as outcome (post-flood mortality and morbidity reduction) and as capacity (pre- and post-intervention levels). This article builds on FRMC analytics to investigate the effect of resilience capacity, represented by five capitals, and five stages of the Disaster Risk Management Cycle (DRM), on injury and mortality outcomes across 66 flood-affected communities in seven Global South countries. Using a quasi-experimental design with regression adjustment, we analyse the relationship between resilience levels, DRM stages, and health outcomes. Results show that social and human capital help reduce injuries after floods, and preparedness lowers both deaths and injuries. Some results were unexpected, such as the positive association between natural capital and delayed deaths, where limited gains in natural capital may not yield meaningful protection in communities with degraded ecosystems.