Building Resilient Communities

Assessing Rural Resilience: Fostering cross-sector collaboration to build connected, thriving communities

The Resilience Institute has developed a Rural Resilience Assessment and Strategy Framework designed specifically for the unique realities, capacities, and challenges of rural communities. Grounded in resilience literature and informed through direct engagement with Idaho communities, the framework recognizes that rural resilience differs fundamentally from urban resilience. While many urban resilience approaches emphasize large-scale infrastructure systems and institutional capacity, rural resilience is more deeply shaped by social capital, local leadership, informal networks, natural resource dependence, and place-based identity.

The framework was developed in response to major gaps in existing resilience assessment approaches. Many current resilience frameworks are urban centered, narrowly hazard focused, highly data intensive, or insufficiently adaptable to the diversity of rural communities. In contrast, The Resilience Institute’s framework is intentionally holistic, participatory, rural focused, and customizable.

Rather than relying on a single definition of resilience, the framework organizes community resilience around a set of interconnected resilience characteristics identified through literature review, stakeholder engagement, and pilot implementation efforts. These characteristics provide a structure for understanding the many dimensions that influence a community’s ability to prepare for, adapt to, and thrive amid social, environmental, economic, and hazard-related change.

The framework currently focuses on the following resilience characteristics:

A core strength of the framework is its participatory orientation. The process combines quantitative and qualitative approaches through surveys, interviews, workshops, focus groups, and collaborative planning processes. This allows communities to identify local priorities, contextualize vulnerabilities, validate findings, surface misconceptions, and co-develop resilience strategies grounded in local realities and values.

The framework is also designed to be highly adaptable across rural contexts. Rural communities experience very different development trajectories, governance structures, economic pressures, environmental risks, and social dynamics. Some communities are facing population decline and economic stagnation, while others are confronting rapid growth, tourism pressure, infrastructure strain, and housing challenges. The framework allows resilience dimensions and planning priorities to be tailored to local conditions rather than applying a rigid one-size-fits-all model.

Through pilot implementation in Idaho’s West Central Mountains region and City of Kamiah (two different projects), the framework has already helped identify interconnected challenges related to wildfire risk, flooding, housing affordability, workforce shortages, infrastructure limitations, environmental degradation, water resource pressures, and economic vulnerability, while also highlighting critical community strengths such as strong social cohesion, volunteerism, local leadership, and regional collaboration.

Future iterations of the framework will incorporate additional community development, financing, and community capital components to further strengthen long-term implementation and investment alignment. However, the current focus remains on building a rural resilience framework that is participatory, holistic, grounded in rural realities, and flexible enough to support the diverse needs and values of Idaho communities, and rural communities beyond.

People

• Dr. Brittany Brand, Professor, Department of Geosciences and Director for The Resilience Institute
• Dr. Lee Parton, Environmental Economist, The Resilience Institute and
• Dr. Zachary Provant, Research Scholar, The Resilience Institute
• Dr. Mitchell Meads, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Resilience Institute
• Prithila Purkayastha, PhD student, Department of Geosciences and The Resilience Institute
• Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy, Resilience Institute Partner, CEO of World Ocean Council, and Founder of Precovery Labs and Okhtapus

Project Collaborators

• West Central Mountains Economic Development Council
• Clearwater Economic Development Association
• Ida-Lew Economic Development Council
• Valley County:
  • Commissioners
  • Recreation
  • Planning and Zoning
  • Agricultural Protection
  • Emergency Management
  • Wildfire Mitigation
• Idaho Power
• Valley Soil and Water Conservation Commission
• Idaho Office of Emergency Management
• Idaho Department of Fish and Game
• Idaho Department of Environmental Quality
• Idaho Department of Water Resources
• Water District 65
• City of Kamiah, Idaho
• City of McCall, Idaho
• City of Donnelly, Idaho
• City of Cascade, Idaho
• Association of Idaho Counties
• University of Idaho – Water Resources Research Institute