WARM is a new tool to help communities understand their underlying needs and capacities. It brings together a wide range of indicators to measure wellbeing (how people feel about themselves and their communities) and resilience (the capacity of people and communities to bounce back after shock or in the face of adversity).

WARM captures both a community's assets, including levels of social capital, good schools and public services, or high educational achievement; as well as vulnerabilities, including levels of depression and unemployment.

At a time of scarce resources, WARM helps agencies understand where investment is most needed, and guides them through the difficult decisions of where to disinvest. The conclusions of the WARM analysis are likely to point agencies towards a greater emphasis on services that help people build social networks and reduce isolation, alongside more traditional support for families and children, and to help people find and keep work.

WARM is described in full in the report Taking the temperature of local communities.

This work has grown out of the Local Wellbeing Project and builds on the project's initial work on measuring wellbeing at the local level; Local Wellbeing: Can we measure it? published in 2008.