Are Happiest Cities Most Resilient To Disasters?

A 2014 report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research ranked American cities according to residents’ “happiness”. The results have surprised many people. This brings to a question that is closely related to resilience and sustainability research: are the happiest cities also most resilient to disasters? The answer to the question relies on how we measure community resilience. However, despite the extensive literature on the topic, there is not yet a commonly adopted metric to assess resilience to disasters. This presentation outlines the major challenges related to resilience assessment. It describes a new model developed by the author, called the Resilience Inference Measurement (RIM) model, to assess community resilience. A number of applications will be shown. The presentation concludes with some perspectives on new research directions in resilience and sustainability research.