Global increases in the magnitude and frequency of flood events have raised concerns that traditional
flood management approaches may not be sufficient to deal with future uncertainties. There is a need
to move towards approaches that manage the resilience of the system to floods by understanding and
managing drivers of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Here we pilot an approach to measure the
resilience of a system to a flood. A method is presented in which indicators are used to measure and
map the spatial distribution of the levels of flood resilience across a landscape. Using three flood affected
municipalities in South Africa, 24 resilience indicators related to floods and its relevant social, ecological,
infrastructural and economic aspects are selected, and integrated into a composite index using a principal
components analysis (PCA). A fifth component of institutional resilience is used to explore levels of
disaster planning, mitigation and public awareness capacities and where these can be increased. The PCA
transformed the 24 variables into four main components, the first of which was strongly correlated with
underlying social variables, while the second and third correlated well with economic and ecological
variables respectively. Distinct spatial variation of flood resilience was found across the study area, with
highest flood resilience in main cities, and lowest in wards located on the periphery of cities often the
location of peri-urban informal settlements. The disaggregation of underlying indicators showed wards
with lowest flood resilience also had the lowest social, economic and ecological resilience. The flood
resilience index was sensitive to the exclusion of all three components highlighting the importance of
capturing the multidimensionality of flood resilience. The approach allows for a simple, yet robust index
able to include an array of datasets generally available in flood prone areas with potential to disaggregate
and trace variables for management and decision making.