The Community Resilience SystemOperationalizing a Whole Community Approach

M. J. Plodinecjohn.plodinec@resilientus.org

www.resilientus.org

www.ResilientUS.org

CARRI’s Mission – resilient communities

The entire community can withstand significant disruptions of any kind, lose as little capacity as possible, and its “New Normal” is as good as or better than the old

In order to improve resilience, communities need:• To engage the entire community

• To assess how resilient they are

• To make improvements that both enhance vitality in normal times and make recovery from disaster more rapid and more certain

• To have access to resources that can help them become more resilient

A Community Resilience System (CRS) to provide practical and immediately useable resources and processes to organize, assess, plan,

and act to achieve greater resilience

Enhancing a community’s resilience

CRS development

National Stakeholders

Research

Partner Communities

Community Leaders

Steering Committee

Subject Matter

Incentives & Reward

Pilot Communities

Outreach and

Education

National collaborative effort to develop a process

and system to achieve more resilient communities

Community Resilience SystemInitiative

2007-09

2009-11

Partner Communities:Charleston, SCGulfport, MSMemphis, TN

2007

Partnership among MS universities, national labs

Bases

• Essential that Whole Community participate

• System should be scalable

• No outside experts required

• System must be action-oriented

• System must be U3 – useful, usable, and used

Whole Community• Capture essentials of a community in 18 Community

Service Areas– All communities provide these services to their members, in

some way– Method of delivery, capacity and quality of each service

differentiate communities

Arts, entertainment and recreation

Finance Public health

Communications Food Public safety and security

Community records Housing Solid waste

Economy Individuals and families

Transportation

Education Local government Water

Energy Natural environment Workforce

Community Resilience System (CRS)

• A knowledge base of – What community resilience is– What makes communities more resilient– Tools to help communities assess their resilience– Resources to help communities take action to become more

resilient

• A process for helping communities use the knowledge base to become more resilient

• A web-based set of tools and resources to make the process and knowledge base available to a wide array of communities

Who needs to participate?

The entire community!

CRS process

Whole Community Assessment

Snapshot

Snapshot – social resilience indicators

Snapshot – social resilience indicators

Example assessment – financial CSA

Some of the external resources

Pilot communities

Results from pilots – at 10,000 feet

• It works!

• Community’s path may not be straight.

• Organizing is tough.

• Snaring business is tougher, but essential.

• Communities looking for certification mechanism(s)

Results – Organizing Leadership Team

• Takes a lot longer than anticipated– Requires relationships (difficult for Emergency Manager)– Breaking community into CSAs has value in helping to

identify POCs– Have to build a case for each part of the community to

participate (difficult for Emergency Manager)

• Getting business involved can be difficult if they’re not involved from the beginning

• Who speaks for individuals and families?

• Have developed stakeholder “maps” for organizing (visual aid for EM’s)

Public health system map

Individuals and families system map

Results – assessments

• Depending on community’s choices, can generate a lot of potential actions

– Threat identification was intended to limit amount that the community had to do

– Some communities saw themselves as vulnerable to everything (Emergency Manager, using THIRA, can help)

• Snapshot useful for some, but not for all• Sometimes local government has delusions of

competence, esp. if they try to assess a CSA that’s not theirs (e.g., economy)

Results – implications for FEMA

• CRS is nation’s most ambitious Whole Community initiative

• Applicable to FEMA implementations, esp. for emergency managers and for recovery planning

• Addresses important parts of Strategic Foresight Initiative

• CARRI has been asked to adapt CRS to needs of institutions of higher education

– Hope to build on excellent work of DRUs

Implications

• Establishing relationships is most important – and most difficult – part of implementing a Whole Community approach

– CSAs (esp. system maps) useful aids for EMgr

• Local government is necessary, but not sufficient– Must have local businesses participate

• Assessment of Whole Community provides opportunities for “omni-directional information sharing”

Conclusion

• Resilience is all about resources and connections across the Whole Community

• Difficult for many EMgrs to recognize connections and interdependencies – who depends on whom for what – and potential resources/allies/partners outside traditional EM channels

– Businesses– NGOs– IHEs

• CRS pilot has led to development of tools to assist EMgr in implementing Whole Community approach

The Community Resilience SystemResults from the Pilot Phase

M. J. Plodinecjohn.plodinec@resilientus.org

www.resilientus.org

www.ResilientUS.org