Developing Socio-Economic Metrics to Measure DOI Hurricane Sandy Project and Program Outcomes

U.S. Department of Interior resilience projects developed in response to Hurricane Sandy were examined for their performance as related to goals and actual outcomes. DOI has in turn developed metrics to measure changes in ecological resilience resulting from the DOI-sponsored projects, and determined that a separate analysis was needed for the development of socio-economic metrics. This report summarizes the DOI investment portfolio; the process to develop socio-economic metrics for the habitat and activities of existing and future coastal resilience efforts; and reviews the application of the socioeconomic and ecological metrics from project, region, and programmatic scales.

162 resilience focused projects were examined in order to develop “accurate and sensitive measures to detect change,” as well as to document the relationship between ecosystem resilience and community resilience. There are 11 total project activities defined for the resilience projects - which are described as the high-level summary of the primary goals, actions, or objectives of a project, and includes, for example, habitat restoration data, mapping and modeling green infrastructure, and ecological resilience planning.

The metrics are organized into four resilience categories:

    • Human Health and Safety,
    • Property and Infrastructure Protection and Enhancement,
    • Economic Resilience, and
    • Community Competence and Empowerment.

In order to apply the metrics to the DOI projects, the research team reviewed each proposal and project summary to ensure the habitat, primary objectives, and stated measures were incorporated. All of the project outcomes were cross-referenced with potential resilience goals, wherein 16 resilience goals total may be achieved across the relevant project outcomes.

A final objective of this study was to develop a framework to assess the socio-economic benefits of the DOI Sandy resilience projects by assigning metrics to each project. Review of each project revealed multiple layers of characteristics and parameters – habitat, anticipated project benefits, likely contributions to resilience, and ecological outcomes. The framework developed here is based on the assignment of one to several project activities to each project, and provides a flexible and repeatable approach to use with future studies.

Part 6 - Methods for Estimating Socio-Economics Metrics provides further guidance on metrics estimation, organized by the four resilience categories and the intersection of the socio-economic resilience goal and the project outcome.

 

Publication Date: December 11, 2015

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  • Indicators
  • Monitoring

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