Guide to the Resilience Dividend Valuation Model

Policymakers, program practitioners, and investors who want to achieve the greatest possible benefits from the resilience projects that they support need to be able to estimate the benefits and costs of those projects. Existing approaches often do not provide a sufficient framework for estimating the benefits that might accrue from a project aimed at increasing resilience, especially if a shock or stress does not occur.

The RAND Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation formed a partnership to develop a modeling framework that can be used to estimate the net benefits of a resilience project. We call the framework the Resilience Dividend Valuation Model (RDVM). The RDVM addresses the absorption of shocks and stressors, the recovery path following a shock, and any co-benefits that accrue from a project, even in the absence of a shock. For any given project, the estimated dividend may be positive or negative. The RDVM is designed to provide a systematic, "structural" framework for assessing resilience interventions that ultimately create benefits and costs within a system, such as a community or city. This guide provides a detailed overview of the RDVM to help policymakers and practitioners understand how it can be implemented across a range of contexts.