Overview

Equitable resilience describes the capacity to withstand, respond, adapt, and transform in the face of climate change and disasters in ways that are culturally appropriate, participatory, and enhances the resilience of the community, not just individual resilience. Equitable resilience acknowledges deeply rooted social forces that affect how community members are made vulnerable to disaster and climate risk, may experience cascading consequences of incidents, and bear disproportionate benefits burdens of actions to increase resilience.

The Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) is a downloadable software application that supports communities in resilience planning with a focus on equity. It engages users in a guided process to inclusively assess local hazards, equity, and the resilience of built, natural, and social environment systems. Results can be used to collaboratively prioritize actions to build community resilience in an equitable way.

The ERB is organized into five sections that contain activities such as participatory mapping, storytelling, participatory indicator assessment, and action planning: Plan, Engage, Assess, Strategize Actions, and Move Forward.

• Plan - users will assemble a core team that is representative of the community. The team will then establish goals for their ERB project.
• Engage - users will identify community connections and prepare an engagement plan.
• Assess - users will identify who is most impacted by current or future hazards. They should determine why and how they are impacted. Users will then discuss local assets and strengths. Finally, they will determine how resilient local built, natural, and social environment systems are.
• Strategize Actions - users will brainstorm and prioritize actions.
• Move Forward - users will implement actions, monitor them for change, and maintain their partnerships.

ERB can be downloaded from the link to the zip file in the table below.

The ERB application is compatible with Windows operating systems (both desktop and laptop computers). The application is not compatible with tablets or mobile devices. 

Audience

The ERB tool is designed for municipal, county, and tribal government personnel who work as resilience planners, sustainability officers, emergency managers, public works, heat officers, and other positions responsible for making and implementing a resilience or hazard mitigation plan. It can also be used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations that work on topics such as environmental and social justice or disaster preparedness and recovery.