Disaster Resilience Scale for individuals: A fundamental requirement for a disaster-resilient society

Abstract

This study proposes a scale that measures the disaster resilience of individuals as members of a disaster-resilient society. We constructed the Disaster Resilience Scale for Individuals (DRSi) by using the survey data of 10,000 individuals across Japan, and extracting 8 factors from 24 items. The verification process shows that DRSi scores differ based on the respondents’ gender and area of residence, thus reflecting the impact of gender-based division of roles in Japan, and region-specific disaster experiences. We also propose a short version of the DRSi for the convenience of data collection. Furthermore, DRSi is expected to work as an effective tool for measuring resilience at the individual level to evaluate the impact of an intervention on a local community.