Building an Assessment Framework

May 13th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

From the beginning of CARRI, we have worked to combine the knowledge we have gained from prominent disaster researchers enlisted in the national research team assembled by Tom Wilbanks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with that of the ‘on-the-ground’ research done in the Gulfport/Gulf Coast Area, the Memphis Urban Area, and the Charleston Low Country Area. The goal is to develop an assessment framework that any community can use to assess its resilience. The framework will combine a statistical snapshot of the community based on readily available data sources, with a self-assessment that provides a lens for the community to examine its assets at risk, its resources, and its planning, leadership and communication.

The national research team has provided valuable information as we work toward developing the assessment framework.

Craig Colten, from Louisiana State University, R.W. Cates, and S.B. Laska, from the University of New Orleans, overviewed the lessons from Hurricane Katrina that relate to disaster recovery and community resilience. Susan Cutter, from the University of South Carolina, provided valuable insights into how the concept of resilience can be understood from the perspective of hazards, disasters and emergency management—pointing out that research in these areas has always been done with an eye on practical policy. Lance Gunderson, from Emory University, researched how resilience, as it has been applied to ecological systems, can inform work on human communities. Betty Hearn Morrow, from Florida International University, examined how socially vulnerable populations are affected by policy decisions and the implications for community resilience. Susanne Moser examined how research on global climate change can inform our thinking about community resilience. read the entire article >

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Resilience Is A Growing Business

April 6th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

Resilience is a growing business. The number of researchers and centers studying resilience in one way or another has blossomed over the past two years. The number of federal agencies with resilience initiatives or divisions working in resilience policy grows daily. All of these are worthwhile efforts and will clearly help the nation focus on the important task of ensuring that we can better recover from significant disturbances to the fabric of our society no matter the scale or cause. The more we know as the result of evidence-based research and the more that we create policy and procedures for multi-disciplined, cross-sectional response and recovery, the better America will be able to protect itself from large scale disruptions.

Unfortunately, most of the research efforts remain largely uncoordinated. While the numerous conferences, workshops and symposia serve an important function for sharing information, they tend toward examining focused aspects of resilience and do not shed light on the overall state of resilience research nor do they identify research gaps and requirements in a way useful to government, academic, or scientific organizations seeking to sponsor work in resilience.

Similarly there is no federal interagency process for resilience. Nothing better demonstrates this than an examination of the various federal agency definitions of resilience and even the different ways the definitions are expressed and applied within a single agency. Agencies are developing resilience plans and applying resilience resources with no common policy framework to ensure that these resources and organizational efforts are effective. read the entire article >

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CARRI Lessons Learned Part I

March 12th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

I asked my CARRI colleagues for their thoughts surrounding what the Community and Regional Resilience Institute has learned over the past 18 months from our research, our national research associates, our partner communities and our wider social network. The responses were very interesting and came as both “lessons learned” and as “resilience nuggets.” I would like to share some of them over the next several weeks. This first set comes from Dr. Tom Wilbanks, CARRI Research Director and Senior Corporate Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Tom’s summary:

Community resilience is far more than traditional emergency preparedness. It means clarifying what a community means and engaging the entire range of community members in considering how to protect those functions and values.

A key is catalyzing and facilitating processes by which communities understand themselves, their values and priorities, their resources and complementarities, and their intentions if they are faced with a disaster.

Community resilience starts with individual families, organizations, and neighborhoods. If they are not resilient, then the community is not resilient.

Resilience is a concept that can catalyze new kinds of community interaction – and action.

Keys to such interaction and action include sustained leadership and communication (both messages and mechanics).

The focus on resilience interaction and action should be on community improvement, not just community protection: prepare to recover better, not just respond.

Resilience is a continuing process, not just a condition to be attained at a particular time. In order to keep the process going, it must be imbedded in continuing institutional roles, missions, and networks – related both to local action and to local knowledge.

One key to this process is iterating the planning process through time, including practicing response plans and using the practices to identify needs to reduce vulnerabilities. read the entire article >

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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 >

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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 >

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