Abstract

Purpose. Standard cost–benefit analyses in housing and communal services often underrepresent “soft” returns – community trust, complaint reduction, and social stability – leading to chronic underinvestment in resilience measures. This paper presents the Tiered Tri-Phase Resilience Valuation Framework (TRVF+), which integrates engineering resilience metrics with monetized intangible benefits to inform more balanced infrastructure decisions.Design/methodology/approach. TRVF+ combines three technical indices – Proactive Preparedness, Continuity Maintenance, and Speed of Restoration – with two intangible constructs: a Composite Social Stability Index and an Avoided Disruption Impact Cost. These five components are fed into a single Resilience-Adjusted Benefit-Cost Ratio (RABCR), evaluated through 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations at an 80 percent probability threshold for RABCR > 1.0. Four anonymized pilots illustrate its flexibility: Tier 1 applies expert Delphi rounds, Tier 2 spans two operators using enterprise resource planning (ERP) or Internet of Things (IoT) logs, and Tier 3 leverages real-time supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) analytics.Findings. Intangible benefits typically account for 15–40 percent of the total project value, often shifting near-marginal proposals into clear approvals. Smaller providers discovered that borderline upgrades became financially compelling once social impacts were calculated, whereas larger utilities found a renewed rationale for rapid restoration.Originality/value. TRVF+ is the first holistic, tiered framework for embedding community-centered intangible returns within resilience CBAs, specifically for housing and communal services. It empowers both data-poor and data-rich organizations to treat trust, reputation, and social calm as the central investment criteria.