Webinar on resilience measurement and analysis

9 May 2018. USAID Feed the Future Webinar. The purpose of this public meeting was to share knowledge about theoretical and applied frameworks for resilience measurement and analysis and to identify opportunities to leverage U.S. university research capabilities to support resilience measurement and analysis.

The meeting featured thought leaders on resilience measurement and analysis from USAID, academia and the practitioner community. See the agenda + live webstreaming

• Speakers included Dr. Greg Collins, Director of USAID’s Center for Resilience and Dr. Mark Constas, Associate Professor at Cornell University, and Chair of the Food and Nutrition Security Resilience Measurement Technical Working Group.
• Recipients of the 2017 BIFAD Scientific Award for Excellence in a Feed the Future Innovation Lab— Dr. James Beaver, University of Puerto Rico; Dr. Juan Carlos Rosas, Zamorano Panamerican Agricultural University, Honduras; and Mr. Laouali Amadou (see picture), University of Maradi, Niger and National Institute of Agricultural Research of Niger.
  
  Laouali Amadou worked in an entomology lab at Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Amadou plans to take what he's learned and apply it to the pest problems in his home country. In Niger, a food-insecure country, the millet head miner can cause up to 85 percent crop loss, threatening the nation’s most important food staple. The USAID project that funded Amadou's trip to the United States fights the miner using larval parasitoids, a biocontrol agent that attacks the pest while it is still in its undeveloped feeding stage. Scientists will also test egg parasitoids for biological control, encouraging a cottage industry in Niger to grow and sell the larval parasitoids.

PANEL 1: THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF RESILIENCEMEASUREMENT 

• Moderator, Mark Constas, Cornell University, and Chair Technical Working Group on Resilience Measurement Panelist, 
• Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Yale University Panelist, 
• Jennifer Cissé, USAID Bureau for Food Security Panelist, 
• Marco D’Errico, FAO Panelist, 
• Joanna Upton, Cornell University

PANEL 2: APPLIED RESILIENCE MEASUREMENT 

• Moderator, Tiffany Griffin, Center for Resilience Panelist, 
• Marco D’Errico, FAO Panelist, 
• Tim Frankenberger, TANGO Panelist, 
• Jon Kurtz, Mercy Corps Panelist, 
• Lynn Michalopoulos, Columbia University Panelist, 
• Erwin Knippenberg, Cornell University

BRAINSTORMING SESSION: LEVERAGING UNIVERSITY CAPACITY IN RESILIENCE MEASUREMENT: RESEARCH, NETWORKS, AND TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION 

• Moderator, Jennifer Cissé, USAID Bureau for Food Security Panelist, 
• Nancy Mock, Tulane University Panelist, 
• Tiffany Griffin, USAID Center for Resilience Panelist, 
• Ed Carr, Clark University Panelist, Josh Ayers, Food for the Hungry

Resources
Learn more about the Resilience Measurement Practical Guidance Note Series by downloading this summarizing brief. The complete guidance notes are available for download via this link.

1. RISK and RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS A risk and resilience assessment provides a means for practitioners to better understand the complex factors that influence resilience to shocks and stresses in a given context. This process is critical to developing and improving a theory for effecting change, upon which resilience-building strategies can be based
2. Shocks Measurement. Investing resources in resilience building requires earnest efforts in resilience measurement and analysis, and an indispensable component of resilience measurement is shock measurement. The second guidance note, GN 2 - Shocks Measurement, builds on the first by describing how to measure and analyze shocks and stresses.
3. Resilience Measurement. The ability to develop strategies and programs that increase resilience requires robust measurement and analysis methods. The third note in the USAID Practical Guidance series - GN 3 Resilience Capacity Measurement - intends to provide new insights based on recent efforts to assess, analyze, monitor, and evaluate resilience.
4. Resilience Analysis. This guidance note describes well-being outcomes and focuses on various quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyzing these three components of the resilience measurement framework.

Forthcoming as announced during the Q and A
25-29 June 2018. Accra, Ghana. The 2018 ANH (Agriculture, Nutrition and Health) Academy Week. The ANH Academy builds on the successful legacy of five agri-health research conferences organised in London by the Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH); as well as ongoing events and activities coordinated under the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), which is led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).