Towards Resilient Communities: Adopting Destana Standard to Measure Community Resilience for Small Islands in Indonesia

The Indonesia Disaster Village Resilience (Destana) Program has five primary objectives, one of which is to systematically conduct disaster risk assessments. This objective involves evaluating hazards, vulnerabilities, capacities, and risks through the community's participation for the benefit of those same communities. It has been integrated and formalized within local governance structures. Nevertheless, there is a notable lack of systematic research regarding the adoption and utilization of the standard in guiding and structuring community-driven disaster and climate risk assessments. This study is one of the first systematic efforts to adopt the 'Destana Standard' as a 'formal resilience measure' to assess risk and vulnerability at the village level. The research conducted surveyed 60 villages in the small but densely populated Ternate Island, Eastern Indonesia. The findings identify parameters that highlight strengths and weaknesses in building resilience among villages, such as access to basic services, disaster management systems, risk reduction actions, and emergency and recovery preparedness. The findings also indicate that the 'Destana Standard' can serve as an index to develop village resilience. The research contributes to highlighting gaps and opportunities for the village resilience measure and offers a reflection on how to complement existing risk assessment for improving village resilience and strengthening the capacity of local governments to deal with mitigation and adaptation effectively to achieve the target of the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular the targets 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and 13 (climate action).