Human capital as a turnkey resource in resilience to cyclones and storm surges: Empirical evidence from coastal Bangladesh

Abstract

What are the best methods to build cyclone and storm resilience in a developing country? We examine the multiple resources that contribute to storm resilience in the highly vulnerable ecological context of coastal Bangladesh, finding that human capital is a critical turnkey resource that enables and facilitates the use of other resources in household responses to floods, storm surges and other cyclone damage. Drawing on a household survey of nine coastal villages in different ecological zones of coastal Bangladesh, we use principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple regression to identify four components of storm resilience and a human capital index that, along with other household resources, predicts resilience to storms and cyclones. We then use this human capital index as a policy tool to map the proportion of highly resilient households in these nine villages and identify additional methods for building a stronger understanding of storm resilience.