n AbstrAct: Measuring progress toward sustainability goals is a multifaceted task. International, regional, and national organizations and agencies seek to promote resilience and capacity for adaptation at local levels. However, their measurement systems may be poorly aligned with local contexts, cultures, and needs. Understanding how to build effective, culturally grounded measurement systems is a fundamental step toward supporting adaptive management and resilience in the face of environmental, social, and economic change. To identify patterns and inform future efforts, we review seven case studies and one framework regarding the development of culturally grounded indicator sets. Additionally, we explore ways to bridge locally relevant indicators and those of use at national and international levels. The process of identifying and setting criteria for appropriate indicators of resilience in social-ecological systems needs further documentation, discussion, and refinement, particularly regarding capturing feedbacks between biological and social-cultural elements of systems.n Keywords: biocultural indicators, indicator sets, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, resilience, sustainability, well-being Indigenous and other place-based, local communities increasingly face an assortment of externally codified development and sustainability goals, regional commitments, and national policies and actions that are designed, in part, to foster adaptation and resilience at the local level. Resilience refers to the capacity of a system to absorb shocks and disturbances and to catalyze renewal, adaptation, transformation, and innovation (Béné et al. 2013). Identifying and setting criteria for the underlying factors that confer resilience to a community are the first steps toward effectively aligning external sustainability-seeking processes, often associated with resourcing mechanisms, with locally relevant and locally embraced approaches to sustaining environmental health and community well-being in the face of environmental, social, and economic change (Fazey et al. 2011;Folke et al. 2003).

Engineering Sustainability 159 Issue ES4 Decision-support tools and the indigenous paradigm Morgan 169 Engineering Sustainability 159 Issue ES4 Decision-support tools and the indigenous paradigm Morgan 177

2 3 4Rammed earth is an accessible, sustainable and increasingly popular building material. Owing to a lack of research, current design standards for rammed earth have taken a conservative stance on material attributes like shear strength. Evaluating the shear strength of rammed earth is particularly important in seismic areas because of the material's high mass, low ductility and propensity to fail in shear. Shear test methods designed for other materials have typically been used in practice to determine the shear strength of rammed earth. In this research the design shear strength guidance available in current earth building standards was compared with experimental shear strength results for stabilised rammed earth. The triaxial (geotechnical) and triplet (masonry) tests were used to evaluate specimens reinforced with natural fibres: sisal and New Zealand flax. Both shear test methods showed that the shear strength capacity of cement-stabilised rammed earth was greater than the current guidance provided in the earth building standards. Recommendations were made to use the triaxial test to evaluate the shear strength of stabilised rammed earth and to allow the use of design shear strength equal to 7% of the compressive strength.

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