Equitable Resilience Builder: An inclusive approach to addressing disasters and climate change
Citation:
Nee, R., I. Reilly, AND M. Shacklette. Equitable Resilience Builder: An inclusive approach to addressing disasters and climate change. To be Presented at NACCHO Preparedness Summit, Cleveland, OH, March 25 - 28, 2024.
Impact/Purpose:
The Equitable Resilience Builder is a resource to help communities enhance their resilience to disasters, homeland security incidents, and climate change in ways that center equity and inclusion. The product is a downloadable application. It contains a set of activities for identifying key hazards and social vulnerabilities in a community; inclusively assessing the resilience of a community's social, built, and natural environment systems; and prioritizing actions for strengthening resilience in an equitable way. It is intended for use by local resilience planners to help them listen to community members, engage them in resilience planning, and foster the networks and relationships that underlie community resilience.
Description:
The threat of cascading and compounding disasters in low-income and underrepresented communities with hazardous and polluting sites makes urgent the need to build resilience. The Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) is a new tool designed for situations where capacity and resources may be limited. ERB builds and strengthens partnerships through listening and participation as it guides users through resilience planning. ERB is a downloadable application that was developed using human centered design. Through collaborative workshops, users assess hazards, vulnerability, and resilience, and identify actions to strengthen community resilience. Activities include: diagramming community connections, storytelling, participatory mapping, and indicator card sorting. This session will walk through the tool and conduct two activities: example indicator card sorting to assess resilience, and storytelling to build community connections, trust, and shared local knowledge. Participants will be familiar with ERB and how it advances environmental and health equity and social justice.