The Case for Resilience Building a Resilient America Anchored on Resilient American Communities www.ResilientUS.org

Positive Adaptation to Change What is Resilience? Traditional The community can withstand significant disruptions of any kind, loose as little capacity as possible and recover to an acceptable new state of normalcy that is at least as good and maybe better than the old. And Positive Adaptation to Change The community anticipates a world of increasing uncertainty, turbulence and change and creates a culture that allows it to manage uncertainty and seek opportunity in turbulence.

Framing Community Resilience

Realities Facing Our Communities Growing Complexity Accelerating Rate of Change New Spectrum of Risks Great Recession Demographic Shifts Unrealistic Expectations

A Few Simple Truths You can’t sell disaster – you can’t scare people and businesses into preparedness You are not just recovering – you are preparing for what’s next The next one won’t be like the last one It takes a community to rebuild a community There are rhythms to recovery; each community has to write its own music.

Why Resilience? The resilience conversation is: About managing change and disruptions in increasingly turbulent times About seizing opportunity in change and taking advantage of disruption Concerned with domains beyond traditional emergency management About the whole community– everyone has to participate Increasing community resilience: Can be transformative – unlocks cooperative potential Creates greater competitiveness

What Do Communities Need to Improve their Resilience? This is ANCR In order to improve resilience, communities need: To understand what community resilience means To assess where it stands on a scale of resilience To make resilience improvements that can enhance daily function and make recovery more rapid and more certain Access to tools and processes that can help it reach a more resilient state NEEDED: A usable process to provide practical and immediately useable resources and processes to assess, measure, improve and reward community and regional resilience

What will Improved Resilience Do? Transform daily community function to: Be competitive – nationally and globally Be action-oriented not reactionary Create a local culture of resilience In a crisis: Minimize disruption Help ensure rapid recovery, with little loss of economic or social value Reduce reliance on limited federal resources Add value by: Increasing the confidence of business and industry to locate in the community Reducing the community’s risk profile, demonstrating better risk management to insurers Increasing lender confidence, encouraging a more robust local economic environment Improving the economic stability, vitality, and growth of the community

And not Letting the Future Shape You Resilience is… Shaping the Future; And not Letting the Future Shape You