RU R A L D E V E LO PM E N T I N S T I T U T E K N OW L E D G E B R I E F FA L L 2016

KNOWLEDGE BRIEF

Asset-Based Rural Development Part II:
Measuring & Evaluating Community Assets

INTRODUCTION
One of the biggest questions facing those interested
in Asset-Based Rural Development (ABRD) is how
to identify and measure the community’s assets.
While the ABRD Knowledge Brief Part I : What
is Asset-Based Rural Development discussed
asset identification, the asset mapping stage is
only the beginning of a larger process that many
communities have used to coordinate and support
sustainable rural development. The tools employed
in ABRD can be used not only to identify local assets,
but also to evaluate those assets against a locally
defined vision of community well-being. Locally
developed indicators allow us to evaluate how well
we are protecting and promoting the community’s
assets and ensuring well-being for all residents. This
Knowledge Brief describes how rural communities
can engage residents in the shared evaluation
of community assets through an ongoing ABRD
process.

USING INDICATORS TO MEASURE
COMMUNITY ASSETS
ABRD can benefit from the use of locally defined
indicators of well-being. Many communities and
regions around the world have measured the
health of the community’s assets through the use of

sustainability indicators. Sustainability indicators
(SIs) are any measurable piece of information
that can be used to represent the status of a more
abstract community value or priority: in other
words, they indicate how something is doing that
is difficult to measure.1 An indicator of community
sustainability cannot tell us everything about the
more abstract thing we are trying to measure, but
when a handful of different indicators are viewed
together they can paint a portrait of how the
community is doing.2
In this way, SIs are one of many ways to represent
the community assets that are identified in asset
mapping. Much like asset identification methods,
indicator initiatives often make use of the concept
of community capital to identify and organize key
priorities for enhancing social, cultural, economic,
human, and ecological capital and to represent
those priorities with measurable data points (i.e.,
indicators).3 For example, if community leaders
have the goal of building up human capital by
attracting new knowledge-based workers, they
can track progress towards this goal with indicators
such as the annual number of tech-based startups,
the average years of education of incoming new
residents, or the number of entrepreneurs using the
services of a local co-working space.

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There are a few key differences between asset
mapping and the identification of sustainability
indicators. One of the foremost of these is the
portrayal of positive and negative aspects of
community life. While ABRD takes a “glass-half-full”
approach to identifying local assets, SIs draw equal
attention to both the indicators in the community
that are doing well and those that are doing badly.⁴
However, in order to determine what it means for
a particular indicator to be doing well, local values
and expectations must be taken account so that the
assessment is accepted by residents.5 Another big
difference is that SIs often rely on more quantitative
data from national or provincial statistics agencies⁶,
and this information about the community (e.g.,
education rate, unemployment rate, or number
of protected areas) must be tempered with local
perspectives so that the assessment remains
true to the sentiments of community members.⁷
Community-based data collection methods often
used during asset mapping can help to ensure
that indicators provide an accurate and locally
appropriate assessment of the community’s wellbeing.⁸

MOBILIZING COMMUNITIES THROUGH
SHARED MONITORING
In many ways, sustainability indicators can be
seen as part of a broader process of ABRD. The
goal of most locally-based indicator initiatives is to
allow a community or region to track, or monitor, its
own progress and development over time.⁹ They
have often been used in natural resource-based
communities faced with a large-scale development
that could impact local well-being and whose
leaders want to have a baseline assessment of local
well-being before potentially harmful impacts
are felt.10 This way, local government and other
community leaders can tell whether development
projects such as mining, forestry, or hydro
expansion are adversely affecting local assets and
the information collected can be used to decide
whether the community wants to accept proposals
for new development. Asset mapping methods can
be used to identify the most appropriate indicators
for such a baseline, and community members
can prioritize certain types of assets that should
be tracked over time by assigning indicators and
revisiting them on a regular basis.11

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Asset mapping and sustainability indicator
development also both have the potential to
mobilize a wide range of community members in
measuring and evaluating local well-being. Both
require the use of public engagement to ensure
that the assets, and indicators identified to measure
those assets, are reflective of community realities.12
This stakeholder engagement, whether done using
interviews, focus groups, workshops, or other
methods, can ensure that local knowledge and
experience is incorporated into the way that wellbeing is defined and measured. This is especially
important in Aboriginal communities, where the
use of traditional knowledge is often more culturally
appropriate than data derived from Western science
(e.g., quantitative measures).13 For examples of
stakeholder engagement in community-based
sustainability indicators, refer to the ABRD
Resource Table: Measuring Assets (pages 4-7).
The inclusion of a wide range of community
members in identifying assets and indicators
also helps to increase the buy-in of residents to
future efforts to use this information to inform
community planning or project development.
Hopefully, if a local agency or organization decides
to revisit a set of indicators several years after the
baseline study, community members will be more
receptive to participate in monitoring the progress
of the community in future iterations. Ultimately,
sustainability indicators can support ABRD most
meaningfully by creating a space for the shared
measurement and monitoring of key assets which
is open to all members of the community. The
Columbia Basin-Boundary region has created an
indicator-based tool that provides an excellent
example of this shared effort. The State of the Basin
report has been produced regularly since 2008
and which uses a variety of quantitative data (e.g.,
census data) and local resident poll data to report
on the region’s well-being using a holistic set of
indicators.14 The State of the Basin is a vital resource
for sustainable development in the region that can
guide regional planning and efforts to mobilize
existing assets in the region.

EXAMPLES OF ASSET MAPPING &
SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS
The ABRD Resource Table: Measuring Assets
(pages 4-7) shows a number of examples of
communities and regions that have used different
methods to measure and evaluate local assets.
These case studies come from across Canada and
the United States and represent both settler and
Aboriginal communities. Each case study took a
unique approach to stakeholder engagement to
involve community members in the asset mapping
or indicator development process.

REFERENCES & RESOURCES
1.

Bell, S. and Morse, S., Sustainability Indicators:
Measuring the Immeasurable? (second edition), New
York: Earthscan.

2.

MacKendrick, N.A. & Parkins, J.R, “Frameworks for
Assessing Community Sustainability: A Synthesis
of Current Research in British Columbia,” Natural
Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service,
Northern Forestry Centre, 2004.

3.

Mary Emery and Cornelia Flora, “Spiraling Up:
Mapping Community Transformation with
Community Capitals Framework,” Community
Development 37, no. 1 (2006): 19-35.

4.

John Kretzmann, and John McKnight, “Building
Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward
Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets,”
(Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, 1993).

5.

Frans L.P. Hermans, Wim M.F. Haarmann, & John
F.L.L.M. Dagevos, “Evaluation of Stakeholder
Participation in Monitoring Regional Sustainable
Development,” Regional Environmental Change 11
(2011): 805-815.

6.

Mark S. Reed, Evan D.G. Fraser, & Andrew J. Dougill,
“An Adaptive Learning Process for Developing
and Applying Sustainability Indicators with Local
Communities,” Ecological Economics 59, no. 4 (2006):
406-418.

7.

Hermans et al., 2011.

8.

Tony Fuller, Denyse Guy, and Carolyn Pletsch,
“Asset Mapping: A Handbook,” (accessed August
29th, 2016): http://www.rwmc.uoguelph.ca/cms/
documents/11/Asset_Mapping1.pdf.

9.

Hermans et al., 2011.

10. Robert Klinck, Ben Bradshaw, and the Naskapi
Nation, "Enabling Community Well-being SelfMonitoring in the Context of Mining: The Naskapi
Nation of Kawawachikamach," Engaged Scholar
Journal 1, no. 2, (2015): 114-130.

KNOWLEDGE BRIEF

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11. Reed et al., 2006; Fuller et al.
12. Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993; Hermans et al., 2011.
13. Natcher, D. C., & Hickey, C. G., “Putting the
Community Back into Community-Based Resource
Management: A Criteria and Indicators Approach
to Sustainability,” Human Organization 61, no. 4
(2002):350-363.
14. Columbia Basin Rural Development Institute, “2015
State of the Basin Snapshot Report,” (Selkirk College,
2015).

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Community/
Region

Type of Initiative

Description

Elliston, NL

Asset mapping initiative

Elliston, NL was hit very hard by the 1992 Northern Cod moratorium.
The community of about 330 residents had lost more than half of its
population and experienced extreme economic hardship. In 1994, after the
municipality decided to turn off the street lights to save money, Elliston
made national news. In the years following, residents began searching for
a local asset to use as an attraction for tourism and place-based branding,
and they chose root cellars. The community has 135 root cellars, many
of which are over 100 years old, representing a significant heritage asset
for Elliston. Local residents compiled an inventory of all of Elliston’s root
cellars and created a database of the findings. Shortly thereafter, Elliston
proclaimed itself “Root Cellar Capital of the World”, and now the root cellar
features in community events, marketing, and festivals such as the Roots,
Rants, and Roars festival, which has won multiple provincial and national
awards.

Fraser Basin
Region, BC

Sustainability indicator
suite

The Fraser Basin Council is a research and advocacy organization comprised
of representatives of government, civil society, First Nations, and the
private sector. The organization coordinates research and regional planning
in the Fraser River basin, which is Canada’s fifth largest watershed and
covers 25% of the province of British Columbia. Since 2003, the Council
has authored a series of “sustainability snapshot reports” which report on
indicators representing the region’s environmental social, and economic
well-being. These snapshot reports focus on key topics such as agriculture
and food, consumption and waste, land use, population and health, and
transportation.

Little Red River
Cree Nation

Sustainability indicator
suite

The Little Red River Cree Nation of remote Northern Alberta developed
a set of sustainability indicators to evaluate land management decisions
and potential forestry development. The nation, faced with pressure to
adopt federal forest management indicators from the Canadian Council
of Forest Ministers, decided instead to design their own indicators based
on traditional ecological knowledge and a holistic Cree worldview. These
indicators, created as part of a “Sustainability Matrix” to aid in Band
decision-making, used community perspectives on topics such as caribou
populations, forest biodiversity, and timber harvesting. This "Sustainability
Matrix" was eventually used by Band leaders to evaluate management
decisions and fostered social learning among different members of the
community.

Naskapi Nation

Sustainability indicator
suite

The Naskapi Nation lives in a remote community of 1000 members in the
sub-arctic region of Northern Quebec. The community has seen decades
of boom and bust in the mining sector and is facing the possibility of
renewed mine development. In order to understand the potential impacts
of mining expansion, the Nation entered into a partnership with researchers
from the University of Guelph to create a baseline set of indicators for the
community. The Nation formed a Steering Committee to guide the research
process and was involved in all phases of the study. The research team
used semi-structured interviews, focus groups with community leaders,
and participant observation to collect information about the values, hopes,
and concerns of community members. This information was used to form
a set of well-being indicators that informed a community survey given to
measure those indicators. Results were displayed using art created by a
local artist, and the Nation now has a baseline assessment of community
well-being so that the impacts of mining can be tracked over time.

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Stakeholder Engagement Method
•

Community leaders formed committee to
do root cellar inventory

•

Community involvement in inventory and
database creation

•

Representation of multiple sectors

•

Community consultations and publications
of findings

•

Training of community researchers

•

Interviews and surveys with community
members to design indicators

•

Nation created a steering committee to
guide research

•

Residents’ values, hopes, and concerns formed basis
for indicators

•

Survey of households to measure indicators

Reference
Tourism Elliston. (2016). “Elliston NL: Root cellar capital of
the world”. Retrieved from http://www.rootcellars.ca

Fraser Basin Council (2010). Sustainability snapshot 2010:
Working together in the Lower Mainland. Retrieved from
http://www.fraserbasin.bc.ca/resources_indicators.html

Natcher, D. C., & Hickey, C. G. (2002). Putting the
community back into community-based resource
management: A criteria and indicators approach to
sustainability. Human Organization, 61(4), 350-363.

KNOWLEDGE BRIEF

M E A S U R I N G A N D E VA LU AT I N G CO MMU N I T Y A S S E T S

Klinck, R., Bradshaw, B., & The Naskapi Nation (2015).
Enabling community well-being self-monitoring
in the context of mining: The Naskapi Nation of
Kawawachikamach. Engaged Scholar Journal, 1(2), 114130.

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Community/
Region

Type of Initiative

Description

Phillips County, Community-based
Arkansas, USA visioning process

Phillips County is a rural county in Arkansas with 21K residents. In 2003 a
group of about 300 residents began a community-based visioning process
to develop new alternatives for regional economic development. The
10-month process led to the creation of a Strategic Community Plan for the
county, which adopted an asset-based “strengths-opportunities” approach
that highlighted five planning areas for the county. The planning team
developed a metrics program that measures the success of supported
projects through key indicators (i.e., employment rate, poverty rate, and
educational attainment of at least associate’s degree). There is interest in
developing a broader set
of indicators in the future. As a result of the Plan, the project has leveraged
$105M in outside investment into the county.

St. Andrews, NS Asset mapping initiative

St. Andrews is a rural Nova Scotian community of about 1,100 residents
with Irish, Scottish, and Dutch heritage. In 2006 residents of St. Andrews
were introduced to ABCD by the Coady International Institute. Following
this, the community conducted an asset mapping process to identify local
and external associations operating in the community. The leaders of
the ABCD initiative decided to draw young people and other community
members into the process by screening the documentary By Their Own
Hands, which documented St. Andrews as a case study of the Coady
Institute’s community development work. The documentary screening,
as well as other public engagement methods, sparked discussion among
residents about how to build on the asset mapping project in future
community development. One outcome of this work was the St. Andrews
Community Partnership, an “association of associations” aimed at fostering
cooperation between different groups in the community.

Tilting, Fogo
Island, NL

The Newfoundland and Labrador Cultural Heritage Inventory project
is a heritage-based asset mapping framework adapted from a guide
to cultural heritage planning used by the Government of Ontario. It
has been applied in two communities in Newfoundland to date, one of
which is the community of Tilting on Fogo Island. Tilting is an Irish fishing
village and one of the larger communities on Fogo Island, which includes
11 communities with a combined population of about 2,500 people.
Communities on Fogo Island, like many rural coastal communities in the
province, have been trying to find economic alternatives to fishing in
sectors such as cultural tourism and crafts. In 2014, residents of Tilting
partnered with Memorial University researchers to create a cultural heritage
inventory for the community. Relying on multiple forms of community
engagement and capacity building, this process has led to the cataloguing
of a wide variety of local cultural knowledge such as stories, poems, songs,
recipes, and other heritage assets. Local stakeholders on Fogo Island in
particular are interested in building on this process by expanding the scope
out to all 11 communities on the island and/or broadening the scope of the
assets included to other social, ecological, and economic factors to guide
local governance and planning.

Asset mapping initiative

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Stakeholder Engagement Method

Reference

•

Engagement of 300 residents in visioning process for
Strategic Community Plan

Read, A. (2012). "Part 1: Industry and industry clusters".
In Asset-based economic development: Building small
and rural communities. A briefing paper from the ICMA
Center for Sustainable Communities. Washington, DC:
International city/country management association.

•

Community members exposed to
ABRD framework

•

Public involvement in asset mapping

•

Public discussions at documentary screening
and other events

Van den Heuvel, M. (no date). ABCD in St. Andrews:
Building on the 200-year legacy of citizen-led development.
Canadian Community Economic Development Network.
Retrieved from http://coady.stfx.ca/tinroom/assets/
file/resources/publications/Stories_of_abcd/ABCD%20
in%20St%20Andrews.pdf

•

Capacity building and training of
community researchers

•

Use of local knowledge and values in asset
identification and cataloguing

•

Community ownership of asset inventory

Newfoundland & Labrador Cultural Heritage Inventory
(2015). Newfoundland & Labrador Cultural Heritage
Inventory: A systematic approach to organizing a
community's cultural resources. Retrieved from http://
www.culturalheritageresources.ca/

KNOWLEDGE BRIEF

M E A S U R I N G A N D E VA LU AT I N G CO MMU N I T Y A S S E T S

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A S S E T- B A S E D RU R A L D E V E LO PM E N T PA R T I I : M E A S U R I N G A N D E VA LU AT I N G CO M M U N I T Y A S S E T S

The Columbia Basin Rural Development Institute, at Selkirk College, is a regional research centre with a
mandate to support informed decision-making by Columbia Basin-Boundary communities through the
provision of information, applied research and related outreach and extension support.

www.cbrdi.ca

1.888.953.1133