Rowe, Taylor help develop North Carolina Economic Resilience Index
What if there were a way to gauge how quickly an area may recover from a natural disaster? East Carolina University College of Business faculty members Dr. Jason Rowe, director of the Bureau of Business Research, and Dr. Erik Taylor, associate professor of management, may be able to answer that question.
The North Carolina Economic Recovery Index evaluates a county’s ability to withstand and recover from disruptions such as natural disasters. (Photo by Cliff Hollis)
In partnership with the North Carolina Pandemic Recovery Office (NCPRO), Rowe and Taylor helped develop the North Carolina Economic Resilience Index, a tool designed to evaluate and strengthen the resilience of the state’s communities. The project began during the COVID-19 pandemic when the state received federal funding for recovery efforts. NCPRO was created, assisted in dispersing funds, and was looking for opportunities to be more responsive in future situations.
“When the pandemic hit, policymakers and state leaders didn’t have clear data below the state level,” explained Rowe. “They were relying on a lot of federal data at the state level. County-level data was largely fragmented.”
Rowe said the first step in the process were community and business engagement surveys that collected data almost in real time from people in their communities to find out what was going on and uncover what was needed from both business and community members. From that, the idea came to develop the resilience index.
According to Taylor, there are existing resilience indices at the federal level, but they are designed to provide data at that level. North Carolina leaders needed something a bit more state centric.
“North Carolina lawmakers and decision makers felt like data was insufficient to tell us what is happening at the local level,” said Taylor. “They wanted something that would draw on local resources instead of federal level data.”
Rowe, Taylor and their team in conjunction with NCPRO met with multiple state and local government stakeholders. Through their meetings, their own research and research by a consulting team of Duke University graduate students, over 100 potential variables were identified for inclusion in the index.
“The idea was not only to find out what uses this index could have, but to find out what those people thought of as being the key indicators within their domain for resilience,” said Taylor.
The result of their work is a nine-category resilience index that measures factors including business community health, communication, community cohesion, education, county government fiscal health, health care, household characteristics, housing and transportation, and socioeconomics.
To calculate the index, a series of principal component analyses, factor analyses, and regression analyses were utilized to reduce the number of variables to a useful set. These variables are then standardized and averaged for each of the nine factors before the overall score is generated.
“The real strength of this product is that it is entirely specific to North Carolina,” said Taylor. “We’re using the data and variables that North Carolina leaders and key personnel tell us are ones that affect conditions on the ground the most. They’re able to make decisions and support their decisions with the information the index provides.”
After significant development, NCPRO released the index in September 2024. One of the first uses was compiling a report using data following Hurricane Helene to measure its impacts.
“In this situation, this tool is useful for a county to identify in what ways resources are going to be needed, why we need these specific resources, and where do they need to be applied,” said Taylor.
From Murphy to Manteo and all points in between, the index will help leaders make decisions that have a positive impact on all North Carolinians, Rowe and Taylor said.
“It’s a significant investment by the state, which indicates state government leaders care about all 100 counties,” said Rowe.
“Tools like this are really about helping communities in North Carolina be stronger,” said Taylor.