Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide and Tool: Research Overview 2025

Published

July 7, 2025

Author(s)

Christina Gore, Jennifer Helgeson

Abstract

Community resilience planning often requires quantifying and understanding the trade-offs that communities make between the benefits and costs of different potential resilience actions. The Economic Decision Guide (EDG) walks communities through the steps to evaluate investments aimed at increasing a community's ability to adapt to, withstand, and recover from a disruptive event. Additionally, to aid communities in using the framework described by the Economic Decision Guide, a tool called the Economic Decision Guide Software (EDGe$) Online Tool is available to assist communities. There is also additional guidance on loss amplification and risk aversion that are critical factors in accurately determining the benefits and costs of resilience investments. There are also case studies available to serve as a resource for communities in using the EDG framework. Additionally, there is a brief overview of non-market valuation techniques that are used in community resilience planning to assist communities. The NIST Community-informed Decisions for Efficient, Cost-effective, and Integrative Disaster Resilience planning (Co-DECIDR) framework and potential advances are noted.

Citation

NIST Research Brief (RB) - 7

Report Number

7

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.RB.7

Local Download

Citation

Gore, C. and Helgeson, J. (2025), Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide and Tool: Research Overview 2025, NIST Research Brief (RB), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.RB.7, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960311 (Accessed May 6, 2026)

Additional citation formats