Innovative Indicator-Based Support Tools for High-Quality Participation in Disaster Risk Management and Urban Resilience Building

Despite broad consensus on the importance of participatory processes in disaster risk management and urban resilience building, substantial gaps persist, including scarce research on monitoring and evaluating participation, lack of comparative studies, underexplored policy and institutional roles. The paper provides methodological and empirical insights by developing and validating two indicator-based tools: one for ex ante assessment of institutional capacity and the other for supporting monitoring and ex post evaluation of participatory processes. The paper also tests them through a comparative study employing a standardizable and reproducible methodology and synthesizes findings from a systematic review of case studies and a semi-systematic review of grey literature to compile a comprehensive pool of criteria and indicators. These are screened, assigned a weight (either by Equal Weight or Best Worst Method) and are aggregated in the two innovative tools mentioned above. These are tested on four case studies: recent local-scale participatory processes aimed at reducing disaster risk and promoting urban resilience addressing multi-hazard scenarios. The research quali-quantitatively demonstrates how, in the four case studies, greater institutional capacity turns into a higher-quality participatory process. Furthermore, the paper improves practical knowledge on participatory processes in disaster risk management and urban resilience building and lays the foundation for evidence-based innovative guidelines for their planning a priori.