Evaluating Resilience in Two Remote Indigenous Australian Communities

While the occurrence of extreme events generally cannot be prevented, their negative effects can be lessened by reducing risks and improving the capacity of people and communities to deal with them. Improving community resilience helps reduce the effects of natural hazards and is increasingly becoming a goal of communities, organisations and governments. To meaningfully determine, coordinate, plan and prioritise the most effective measures to improve resilience, a baseline assessment of a community's strengths and weaknesses is required. This paper quantitatively assesses the status of community resilience in two remote indigenous communities, Ngukurr and Gunbalanya in the Northern Territory. A quantitative assessment is used to explore community perceptions of disaster resilience within the study areas as well as the methods of assessment and appropriateness of the assessment methodology.