Indicators for territorial resilience to natural disasters and climate change in vulnerable communities: a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: Evidence on territorial resilience indicators, disaster risk, climate change and vulnerable communities has expanded during the last years, but differences in design, scale, indicators and territorial context still complicate direct comparison. A traceable synthesis is therefore needed to. Objective: To systematically evaluate the evidence on territorial resilience indicators, disaster risk, climate change and vulnerable communities, identifying recurrent mechanisms, context-dependent effects and gaps that matter for policy and territorial management. Method: A systematic review was conducted for the 2020–2025 publication window using the corrected evidence matrix supplied for this manuscript. The final corpus comprised 23 peer-reviewed journal studies, each with a real and traceable DOI. Searches and verification considered Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, SciELO, Redalyc, Google Scholar and journal platforms. Eligibility required thematic relevance, explicit methods, recoverable results and bibliographic traceability. Study context, design, analytical dimensions, principal findings and limitations were. Results: The corpus confirms that resilience indices commonly combine socioeconomic, infrastructure, environmental and community-capital dimensions. Their usefulness depends on transparent weighting, local calibration and empirical validation; direct transfer of indicator sets across territories can hide differences in exposure, adaptive capacity and recovery resources. Across the corpus, stronger inferences came. Conclusions: The synthesis supports context-sensitive decisions rather than universal prescriptions. For indicadores de resiliencia territorial frente a desastres y cambio climático, future research should improve comparability of indicators, reporting transparency and longitudinal assessment, while explicitly documenting equity, governance.