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Abstract. Given the increased attention on resilience strengthening in international humanitarian and development work, there is a growing need to invest in its measurement and the overall accountability of resilience strengthening initiatives. The purpose of this article is to present our framework and tool for measuring community-level resilience to flooding and generating empirical evidence and to share our experience in the application of the resilience concept. At the time of writing the tool is being tested in 75 communities across eight countries. Currently 88 potential sources of resilience are measured at the baseline (initial state) and end line (final state) approximately 2 years later. If a flood occurs in the community during the study period, resilience outcome measures are recorded. By comparing pre-flood characteristics to post-flood outcomes, we aim to empirically verify sources of resilience, something which has never been done in this field. There is an urgent need for the continued development of theoretically anchored, empirically verified, and practically applicable disaster resilience measurement frameworks and tools so that the field may (a) deepen understanding of the key components of disaster resilience in order to better target resilience-enhancing initiatives, and (b) enhance our ability to benchmark and measure disaster resilience over time, and (c) compare how resilience changes as a result of different capacities, actions and hazards.

In the research and policy environment, local knowledge (LK) is increasingly seen as an important component of building the resilience of communities and delivering sustainable disaster risk reduction (DRR) approaches tailored to local contexts. Many studies focus on documenting LK in different contexts; however, far less emphasis has been given to understanding how external stakeholders (i.e. government, NGOs, consultants) engage with and perceive the value of LK for DRR. Through an intepretivist epistemology and a case study research design, this paper sets out to fill in this gap by engaging with external stakeholders involved with community-based flood risk management in Malawi. It bases its findings on a thematic analysis of qualitative data collected through focus group discussions (n = 7) and key informant interviews (n = 69) conducted in 2016 and 2017. The findings show that although there is an appreciation of the importance of LK in rhetoric, its inclusion in DRR practice remains limited. The strong dichotomy between local and scientific knowledge persists and it has led to the further marginalisation of LK. The international policy and research push for LK in DRR is therefore not translated to realities on the ground. To the best of our knowledge, this presents one of the first studies of external stakeholders' attitudes of LK and how these influence its overall position in DRR. The paper calls for further development of knowledge co-production processes that will be based on giving equal weight, recognition and importance to LK.

Disasters pose a growing threat to sustainable development. Disaster risk management efforts have largely failed to arrest the underlying drivers of increased global risk: uncontrolled urbanization and proliferation of assets in hazardous areas. Resilience provides an opportunity to confront the social‐ecological foundations of risk and development; yet it has been vaguely conceptualized, without offering a concrete approach to operationalization. We propose a conceptualization of disaster resilience centred on well‐being: 'The ability of a system, community or society to pursue its social, ecological and economic development objectives, while managing its disaster risk over time in a mutually reinforcing way.'We present a conceptual framework for understanding the interconnections between disasters and development, and outline how it is being operationalized in practice.