Although Chile is one of the countries most exposed to natural hazards, to date there is no national index that shows the differences in resilience levels within the country. This study develops a community resilience index on a national scale based on the Baseline Resilience Community (BRIC) index. The BRIC index for Chile was built with 49 indicators, from different sources at the district level. Our results determined that resilience is not distributed homogeneously throughout the country. The highest levels of resilience are concentrated in the central macro-zone. In comparison, the extreme zones of Chile focus close to 90% of their population in the lowest levels, accounting for an uneven distribution of resources and services that impact resilience levels. These differences were mainly explained by indicators such as the percentage of the population without a health insurance system, the percentage of the population without internet access, and the percentage of electoral participation, among others. The results demonstrate that the BRIC model can be successfully implemented to assess community resilience in Chile and suggests the possibility of targeting resources and strategies to increase resilience in areas with the lowest levels of community resilience.

Road networks are essential for access, resource distribution, and population evacuation during natural events. These challenges are pronounced in rural areas, where network redundancy is limited and communities may have social disparities. While traditional risk management systems often focus on the physical consequences of hazard events alone, specialized literature increasingly suggests the development of a more comprehensive approach for risk assessment, where not only physical aspects associated with infrastructure, such as damage level or disruptions, but also the social and economic attributes of the affected population are considered. Consequently, this paper proposes a Vulnerability Access Index (VAI) to support road network decision-making that integrates the social vulnerability of rural communities exposed to natural events, their accessibility to nearby critical infrastructure, and physical risk. The research methodology considers (i) the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) calculation based on socioeconomic variables, (ii) Importance Index estimation (I_imp) to evaluate access to critical infrastructure, (iii) VAI calculation combining SVI and I_imp, and (iv) application to a case study in the influence area of the Villarrica volcano in southern Chile. The results show that when incorporating social variables and accessibility, infrastructure criticality varies significantly compared to the infrastructure criticality assessment based solely on physical risk, modifying the decision-making regarding road infrastructure robustness and resilience improvements.

Road networks play a crucial role in accessing, sourcing, and evacuating populations during extreme natural events. These issues are especially critical in rural settings, where redundancy of networks is uncommon and where the population may present significant social disparities. Traditional risk management systems have studied the risk of the road network from a physical perspective, where the probability of damage is estimated in terms of its fragility (vulnerability) and exposure given certain hazard intensity measures. However, the specialized literature increasingly suggests the development of more comprehensive risk management systems, where not only physical aspects associated with infrastructure are considered but also the social and economic characteristics of the beneficiary population. This study proposes a Vulnerability Access Index for road network decision-making that integrates social vulnerability of rural communities exposed to extreme natural events and their accessibility to nearby critical infrastructure. The proposed methodology considers three stages: Stage 1, Social Vulnerability Index based on socioeconomic variables, to which a principal component analysis is applied to identify the most determining dimensions of social vulnerability; Stage 2, Importance Index to evaluate access to critical infrastructure, and; Stage 3, Vulnerability Access Index, which is obtained as a combination of the indices estimated in the previous stages. A case study is presented in a highly exposed region to volcanic hazards in Chile. The proposed index identified links of the road network that require special attention as they provide access to highly vulnerable population and present critical access issues.