Defining Community Resilience

February 23rd, 2009 - Warren Edwards

Resilience is a concept that has grown in importance to the nation as we have struggled with domestic security concerns in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. For CARRI it was important that we establish for ourselves and our partner communities what we meant when we talked about community resilience. As Dr. Bob Kates described the definition landscape in the recent CARRI panel before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, engineers talk of the capacity to absorb disturbance and return to a relatively stable prior state; ecologists talk about the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize into a system that still retains its identity, structure and functions; vulnerability scientists talk about responses, adaptation and adaptive capacity. CARRI’s working definition speaks to the social, economic and political needs of the community. Resilience for us is a community or region’s capability to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant multi-hazard threats with minimum damage to public safety and health, the economy, and national security. We will continue to examine and refine that definition in light of our ongoing research, practice and experience.

Likewise “community” is a term that required thought and definition to differentiate our focus from the myriad of types of possible communities. For our purposes, a community has as its basis a geographic description. It is a place defined by common bonds and linkages which often have an economic basis. CARRI does not attempt to define the boundaries of these communities although we find in urban areas that they frequently generally conform to the metropolitan statistical area of a city. The CARRI process accepts, however, that the best definer of a community is the community itself as it organizes itself for the resilience journey.

Comments (3)

The CARRInstitute — Components Defined

February 16th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

In order to take full advantage of the practice and research linkage and to move our effort to the next level, CARRI created the Community and Regional Resilience Institute in 2009. Establishment of this new Institute is an important step in furthering CARRI’s initial work in the Southeast and realizing the full potential of the expanding community practice and growing body of research. The new Institute has five divisions:

Community Resilience Practice
The Community Resilience Practice works directly with communities who desire to increase their resilience across all community domains using the CARRI process. In 2009 we will continue the community partnerships with our three original partner communities while reaching out to other regional partners and communities with tailored programs designed to launch them onto a resilience pathway. Additionally, CARRI will finalize a community implementation package that will provide the basic materials to enable a community to understand and take ownership of the CARRI process with ongoing Institute guidance and mentoring.

Community Resilience Research
Building on the research work already accomplished, the Community and Resilience Institute will become recognized in the area of resilience research as a center of community-based resilience study. We will act as a facilitator to promote linkages among the larger family of resilience centers in the nation in matters relating to communities. CARRI has had significant success in fully integrating its research efforts into the community practice as well as assembling an outstanding group of university, laboratory and independent scholars from across the US. The Institute will continue its publication of community-based research, academic papers and case studies to provide support to organizations and agencies working in the community resilience field. Additionally, we want to focus this year to identify the gaps in community resilience knowledge to be better able to provide advice on national research requirements. The Institute will also sponsor workshops and seminars to assemble those working in the area of community resilience and promote cooperation and collaboration on this nationally vital research area. read the entire article >

Comments (0)

Community and Regional Resilience Institute Blog — Come Read and Learn about CARRI

February 13th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

Welcome to the Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) Blog. A new feature of the Institute, we hope that this site will serve two purposes – 1) to promote discussion among community practitioners and the Institute staff on ideas, practices and processes being developed to assist communities to become more resilient and 2) to enhance communication among other similarly focused centers. We welcome your ideas and your questions. We will provide answers where we can and assist you in finding answers where we need to learn with you.

For those not familiar with our Institute — In early 2007 the Department of Homeland Security suggested the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) look at “resilience” as part of the congressionally mandated Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI). With some considerable doubt and uncertainty, we began a fairly comprehensive examination to determine what the term resilience meant in the context of homeland security.

Our initial investigations took the form of engaging a wide spectrum of individuals, organizations, and governmental entities. We talked to anyone with experience who would talk to us – over one hundred experts and practitioners from government, private industry, academia and non-governmental groups – about the state and direction of resiliency. read the entire article >

Comments (0)