Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RESILOC (Resilient Europe and Societies by Innovating Local Communities)
Reporting period: 2020-06-01 to 2022-11-30
Europe is in the process of adjusting its development models to being capable of sustaining societal well-being and prosperity. Ambitious programmes like the European Green Deal are being implemented to support this whilst, at the same time, all levels of organisation and governance are facing the challenge of having to respond to a changing landscape of risks, which add complexity to our urbanised socio-economic systems.
Extreme weather events and other challenges are increasing both in magnitude and in frequency. Science is clear that this is not a temporary situation. The broader picture shows that mitigation efforts alone will not be enough to sustain the desired European well-being and prosperity. Quality of life will be dependent on how well the adaptation agenda is accepted and implemented over coming decades. Disaster preparedness and societal resilience are therefore of increasing relevance to local decision makers.
The European Commission is strongly supporting a paradigm shift from ‘risk to resilience thinking’, which is increasingly declared as a national priority by individual member states. The RESILOC Project was funded by the European Commission to innovate a solution that also empowers local and regional levels of governance as contributors to the development agenda by ‘improving
on the processes for a better preparedness of communities against disasters and better support European and international policies on resilience in societies’.
To achieve this the project took 42 month to i) Increase the understanding of resilience in societies and local communities, ii) Innovate on the strategies for improving resilience, iii) Innovate on tools and solutions for improving resilience iv) Communicate, demonstrate and assess the validity of approaches, solutions and tools in field trials, v) Have an impact and define concrete steps towards a more resilient society.
Extreme weather events and other challenges are increasing both in magnitude and in frequency. Science is clear that this is not a temporary situation. The broader picture shows that mitigation efforts alone will not be enough to sustain the desired European well-being and prosperity. Quality of life will be dependent on how well the adaptation agenda is accepted and implemented over coming decades. Disaster preparedness and societal resilience are therefore of increasing relevance to local decision makers.
The European Commission is strongly supporting a paradigm shift from ‘risk to resilience thinking’, which is increasingly declared as a national priority by individual member states. The RESILOC Project was funded by the European Commission to innovate a solution that also empowers local and regional levels of governance as contributors to the development agenda by ‘improving
on the processes for a better preparedness of communities against disasters and better support European and international policies on resilience in societies’.
To achieve this the project took 42 month to i) Increase the understanding of resilience in societies and local communities, ii) Innovate on the strategies for improving resilience, iii) Innovate on tools and solutions for improving resilience iv) Communicate, demonstrate and assess the validity of approaches, solutions and tools in field trials, v) Have an impact and define concrete steps towards a more resilient society.
The RESILOC Project gained important knowledge in understanding resilience on a community level. This was partially achieved through the study phase and the ongoing exchange with community representatives before and during the RESILOC field trials. The feedback from dissemination activities added further insights on the needs an practices for increasing resilience at the community level. Based on this knowledge a holistic methodology to assess community resilience was developed and improved until the end of the project. To facilitate the methods implementation different tools were developed to supports local decision makers to store, organise and interpret the resilience related data that is collected through the RESILOC resilience Assessment methodology/process. Next to the data inventory and the Platform the project also developed tools like questionnaires and sensor devises were developed to collect data that is statistically not available at the local level. The overall assessment process including the tools was verified and validated through field trials in four partner communities. A 5th community executed an assessment and as an early adopter. The overall output of the project is a science-based solution that enables communities to assess their local resilience and develop strategies to improve it.
This solution is based on three simple pillars:
1) Organising sustainable civic engagement – by using Local Resilience Teams (LRTs)
2) Operationalising community resilience – through the use of resilience indicators and innovative assessment tools
3) Developing local resilience strategies – based on a holistic, multi-stakeholder approach
In line with these pillars, the following tools have been developed, trialed and validated in five communities across Europe, each of a different size, geography and socio-economic characteristics:
-> A common process for civic engagement that organises relevant stakeholders into Local Resilience Teams (LRTs). This provides a method of formation and a process to train and involve them in local resilience assessments including the definition of indicators and data collection. The baseline for this process was formally approved by the Council of Europe.
-> A Framework for Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies (DIP’s) that helps communities to operationalise community resilience in a logical order and based on their locality and circumstances. Localisation is achieved through the definition of Relevance, Direction and Local Targets (local knowledge) and is supported by community managers, technical experts and the LRTs themselves.
-> Facilitation tools – a suite of technical solutions that support community managers and LRTs to collect data and organise it to undertake their own local resilience
assessments. This includes a RESILOC Inventory that allows the community to store and organise data related to six clear and well-defined resilience dimensions.
Sub-tools were developed to compensate for a likely limited availability of statistical data at a local level:
a) A theory-based survey on adaptive behaviour to assess the less tangible aspects of resilience
b) An easy online survey tool that allows LRTs to collect primary data at the community level
c) The RESILOC App for times when communities need a tool to connect at a citizen level.
d) A tool for sentiment analysis to scan social media traffic for particular relevant key words
e) GDPR conforming sensors to track and record the movement of masses in exposed areas
f) Standard APIs to connect legacy tools in use at the community/regional level.
The methods tools and trial results have been disseminated among the related target audiences at different levels of governance. Impact was generated through
early adopters interests on from the regional level (e.g. from Austria) and the interest in the projects recommendations in EU policies.
This solution is based on three simple pillars:
1) Organising sustainable civic engagement – by using Local Resilience Teams (LRTs)
2) Operationalising community resilience – through the use of resilience indicators and innovative assessment tools
3) Developing local resilience strategies – based on a holistic, multi-stakeholder approach
In line with these pillars, the following tools have been developed, trialed and validated in five communities across Europe, each of a different size, geography and socio-economic characteristics:
-> A common process for civic engagement that organises relevant stakeholders into Local Resilience Teams (LRTs). This provides a method of formation and a process to train and involve them in local resilience assessments including the definition of indicators and data collection. The baseline for this process was formally approved by the Council of Europe.
-> A Framework for Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies (DIP’s) that helps communities to operationalise community resilience in a logical order and based on their locality and circumstances. Localisation is achieved through the definition of Relevance, Direction and Local Targets (local knowledge) and is supported by community managers, technical experts and the LRTs themselves.
-> Facilitation tools – a suite of technical solutions that support community managers and LRTs to collect data and organise it to undertake their own local resilience
assessments. This includes a RESILOC Inventory that allows the community to store and organise data related to six clear and well-defined resilience dimensions.
Sub-tools were developed to compensate for a likely limited availability of statistical data at a local level:
a) A theory-based survey on adaptive behaviour to assess the less tangible aspects of resilience
b) An easy online survey tool that allows LRTs to collect primary data at the community level
c) The RESILOC App for times when communities need a tool to connect at a citizen level.
d) A tool for sentiment analysis to scan social media traffic for particular relevant key words
e) GDPR conforming sensors to track and record the movement of masses in exposed areas
f) Standard APIs to connect legacy tools in use at the community/regional level.
The methods tools and trial results have been disseminated among the related target audiences at different levels of governance. Impact was generated through
early adopters interests on from the regional level (e.g. from Austria) and the interest in the projects recommendations in EU policies.
The RESILOC solution helps local community mangers to collect and translate resilience related data into useful information to develop localised resilience strategies. Data and the ambition to reduce the impact of natural and man-made hazards existed in the communities prior to the project but the local level needs people that can connect the dots. Resiloc now provides a validated prototype of a software tool/platform(TRL7) that enables and advances local decision makers in their capacity to combine the physical aspects and social features of a community to calculate their own community resilience.
To ensure a holistic approach across the different resilience dimensions, the project established the concept of Local Resilience Teams (LRTs). These information networks of local stakeholders ensure civic engagement throughout the assessment process and the articulation of the resilience strategies. This raised a lot of attention within the disaster resilience domain and has the potential to become a standard for civic engagement at large.
The combination of a holistic methodology and assessment tools allows communities to visualise hazards and to reduce their vulnerability to this hazard in all of its dimensions. This combined feature was not available to communities in Europe to this point. It has a high potential to become common practice as communities are at the first line to improve resilience. Its adoption, however, will depend on incentives like the integration into regional plans for disaster risk reduction or the articulation of a national priority on disaster resilience.
To ensure a holistic approach across the different resilience dimensions, the project established the concept of Local Resilience Teams (LRTs). These information networks of local stakeholders ensure civic engagement throughout the assessment process and the articulation of the resilience strategies. This raised a lot of attention within the disaster resilience domain and has the potential to become a standard for civic engagement at large.
The combination of a holistic methodology and assessment tools allows communities to visualise hazards and to reduce their vulnerability to this hazard in all of its dimensions. This combined feature was not available to communities in Europe to this point. It has a high potential to become common practice as communities are at the first line to improve resilience. Its adoption, however, will depend on incentives like the integration into regional plans for disaster risk reduction or the articulation of a national priority on disaster resilience.