Purpose
In this activity, you will define the breadth and depth of your resilience planning efforts and determine the scope, budget, timeline, and deliverables required to complete your planning process.
Why?
Understanding where you are is key to understanding where you would like to go. Many communities begin the resilience planning process due to noticeable changes to their community, economy, infrastructure, natural environment, or climate. A resilient community is not only prepared for natural and economic shocks, but it proactively works to reduce risk and vulnerability in its social, economic, and natural systems. You will need to define what resilience means to you, based on the existing conditions, vulnerabilities, opportunities, needs, goals, and aspirations of your community. Defining the scope of your resilience planning efforts will determine your path forward to successfully execute this project and ensure that your community continues to thrive.
When?
This is the first step in the process and it generally takes one to three weeks to complete.
Tips
- Take a strategic approach to address your community’s immediate and long-term needs. “Right-size" your plans in alignment with your community’s resilience vision and goals. If your community has not yet established its resilience vision and goals, navigate to Activity 4.
- Invest in strategic partnerships. Consider partnerships with community assets (e.g., universities, non-profits, businesses, etc.) that may help you become more competitive for funding opportunities to complete this work.
How does my community do this?
- Define the breadth and depth of your resilience planning effort. You will need to consider whether or not you are developing or making updates to a specific plan, developing a resilience framework, or operationalizing resilience into various aspects of your existing operations. In addition, you will want to consider three specific criteria: geographic boundaries, governance, and planning time frame. For additional tips on how to define your resilience planning effort navigate to the Additional Guidance section.
- Inventory existing plans and identify resilience strategies. Creating a resilient community does not mean that you need to start from scratch. It is useful to start by inventorying your community’s existing plans and policies and determining which already include information on current and future shocks and stressors and strategies to address them. If you are creating a pre-disaster recovery plan this is a crucial step in your planning process. Plan integration - the process of aligning all of your community planning efforts to create a safer, smarter, and more resilient community - is essential. You can use the FEMA Plan Integration Guide and Checklist (starting on page 33) to better support that process. Consider asking the following questions:
- What existing resilience strategies are already being implemented locally to address shocks and stressors to your community?
- Does your existing plan inventory list all of the key local plans that guide decision-making and priorities in areas that are most important to resilience, including (if available) economic development, housing, infrastructure, transportation, parks and open space, and agriculture?
- Does your Comprehensive Plan (also known as a Master or General Plan), Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, and Capital Improvement Plan identify and address current and potential future shocks and stressors to your community?
- Does your community already have a Pre-Disaster Recovery Plan? Does your community already have a Climate Change Adaptation or Resilience Plan? Does your community have a high-level resilience framework?
- Determine the budget, timeline, and deliverables to complete your resilience planning process. These factors may already be determined for you based on the grant requirements of a particular planning process. But, if you are just starting, consider the following:
- Budget: As in any planning effort, there are likely budget items that are critical to the success of your project, and optional items, but may add value. Utilize the workbook to track expenses.
- Funding: Funding to support your resilience planning work may determine your project scope, timeline, community engagement efforts, and more. There are many places to obtain funding to support resilience planning work in your community. For a list of potential funding opportunities, see the CRO Funding Opportunities page.
- Timeline: Generally speaking, the development of a specific plan (e.g., a pre-disaster recovery plan or a climate change adaptation plan) can take anywhere between 6-24 months. Yet the timeline for developing a general community resilience framework may take between 3-6 months. Plan updates (e.g., a Comprehensive Plan) can generally take 6-14 months depending on the community, plan, and allotted time frame. The timeline of your project may also be determined based on specific grant requirements. Utilize the Work Plan Template and the Project Schedule template in the workbook.
- Deliverable(s): The end product of your project may also be determined by grant requirements and may take a variety of formats, including a final plan, a series of smaller products, a website, or all of the above.
Community Call Out: Douglas County, CO
In developing the Douglas County Pre-Disaster Recovery Plan, officials across every department in Douglas County worked together to define the scope of their planning efforts early on in the process. The plan states that its purpose is “to provide a comprehensive framework for recovering from disasters and emergencies, particularly those incidents that are large or catastrophic. It is a guide for roles and responsibilities, prioritization, and decision-making in disaster recovery situations. This document is designed to map recovery actions that will result in a resilient and capable community.”