Climate Resilience Planning with the Equitable Resilience Builder

Federal agencies are increasing efforts to provide support to local communities for climate adaptation and hazard resilience. This involves engaging communities using approaches to understand and address problems holistically, particularly where equity and environmental justice are concerned. A team from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed the Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) tool to support community resilience planning. Equitable resilience makes use of social vulnerability concepts and assessment methods but provides a deeper analysis that addresses the root causes of inequities. The ERB tool provides community engagement guidance, storytelling, participatory indicator assessment, and action planning. The team used human-centered design methods of iterative problem definition, ideation of solutions, and protoyping and testing to develop the ERB. This presentation provides a brief overview of the ERB tool for the Urban Waters National Workshop. 

Impact/Purpose

Increasing and inequitable impacts from climate change and other hazards are a growing concern for communities and a focus of planning efforts. The Equitable Resilience Builder tool supports community resilience planning efforts by offering guidance and activities for engaging community members in planning. The tool may be of interest to planning practitioners, community based organizations and state and federal agency staff who support community resilience efforts.

Citation

Eisenhauer, E., K. Maxwell, B. Kiessling, S. Julius, M. Fry, J. Finley, Annie Matsler, M. Shacklette, L. Oliver, I. Reilly, S. Henson, AND R. Nee. Climate Resilience Planning with the Equitable Resilience Builder. Urban Waters Federal Partnership 2024 National Workshop, Washington, DC, April 02, 2024.