Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESILOC (Resilient Europe and Societies by Innovating Local Communities)
Berichtszeitraum: 2019-06-01 bis 2020-05-31
"The project is developing a methodology for collecting information from the communities and combine them to assess resilience along seven dimensions. Software tool will be designed and implemented to combine the physical aspects and social features of a community associated with human behaviour and risk preparedness, with the aim of producing community-specific resilience assessments. RESILOC will deliver a cloud-based platform able to strategically support stakeholders in modelling and assessing resilience for a city or a community. The resilience assessment will serve as a base for identifying localised resilience-building strategies, enabling “what-if” scenarios and suggesting actions to be implemented thanks to informed and empowered local resilience teams.
During a disaster, the RESILOC platform will be used to collect information that will allow to re-asses the indicators previously generated. In this way, stakeholders will be able to analyse the impact of the crises on the resilience of their community and identify new actions, choosing the most effective future intervention and communication strategy.
To achieve this, the project will build on the components of resilience found in studies conducted both inside the EU and internationally, to the definition of relevant data sets to be collected and used by the platform to create tangible added values for stakeholders to increase resilience and for citizens to be better prepared and resilient: all this will be carried out together with the users from the involved communities, jointly designing the end-used driven tool itself.
Local Resilience Teams are being created in 5 communities (2 in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia ) to test and evaluate all aspects of the platform in a series of realistic scenarios. The teams include different expertise and roles to ensure the participation of the community in shaping up strategies/actions to better withstand disasters, adapt to them and eventually foster the development of an overall ""stronger"" (resilient) community."
During a disaster, the RESILOC platform will be used to collect information that will allow to re-asses the indicators previously generated. In this way, stakeholders will be able to analyse the impact of the crises on the resilience of their community and identify new actions, choosing the most effective future intervention and communication strategy.
To achieve this, the project will build on the components of resilience found in studies conducted both inside the EU and internationally, to the definition of relevant data sets to be collected and used by the platform to create tangible added values for stakeholders to increase resilience and for citizens to be better prepared and resilient: all this will be carried out together with the users from the involved communities, jointly designing the end-used driven tool itself.
Local Resilience Teams are being created in 5 communities (2 in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia ) to test and evaluate all aspects of the platform in a series of realistic scenarios. The teams include different expertise and roles to ensure the participation of the community in shaping up strategies/actions to better withstand disasters, adapt to them and eventually foster the development of an overall ""stronger"" (resilient) community."
The RESILOC Project gained important knowledge in understanding resilience on a community level. Most achievements have been made within Work Package (WP) 2, designated to the objective of understanding resilience. More specifically, important progress was made in WP2 by accumulating and organising knowledge about vulnerability, exposed values, defining hazard scenarios and risk perception at community level in coordination with the general approaches on resilience on an EU and international level. The knowledge gained was carried into the activities of WP3 which began to develop the RESILOC Hypercube, an indicator matrix that is planned to be the basis for a resilience assessment along 5-7 dimensions, that will be relevant to stakeholders’ communities. Early implementation activities took place but the larger part of it, is scheduled for the second year of the project.
The communication and dissemination activities started in time, respective plans were developed and implemented. Both activities will be synchronised and accelerated throughout the second project year. There were some early activities on standardisation and exploitation providing the foundation for a focused and intensified approach towards a project impact and sustainability in the second project year.
The activities on community involvement have started. A concept for building and implementing the local resilience teams was completed and the formation of local resilience teams has started in all communities but Gorizia, as being the new partner in the consortium, replacing the City of Bergen. It is planned to develop project specific guidelines and scenarios representing the RESILOC Trial Guidance (RTG).
The communication and dissemination activities started in time, respective plans were developed and implemented. Both activities will be synchronised and accelerated throughout the second project year. There were some early activities on standardisation and exploitation providing the foundation for a focused and intensified approach towards a project impact and sustainability in the second project year.
The activities on community involvement have started. A concept for building and implementing the local resilience teams was completed and the formation of local resilience teams has started in all communities but Gorizia, as being the new partner in the consortium, replacing the City of Bergen. It is planned to develop project specific guidelines and scenarios representing the RESILOC Trial Guidance (RTG).
Although resilience is known concept, understanding and local approaches vary across communities: RESILOC wants to fill this gap offering a set of tools that can capture the local specificities and experiences.
With the project implemented, local communities will be able to learn about scenarios, strategies, actions and results in a comparable way. The involvement of communities in the decision process of authorities will also be brought to the forefront
In a nutshell, RESILOC aims to increase the understanding of resilience in local communities and to produce strategic software tools that empower local actors to assess the resilience of their communities and identify actions to increase it.
To do this, RESILOC will develop a Toolkit that consists of four main components:
- The RESILOC Inventory – this can be described as a data ‘shell’ – or Repository – enriched with a set of services which store information on resilience that is provided by local community actors and classify data on the resilience of cities and local communities. The Inventory enables ‘snapshots’ of a community’s resilience profile to be subsequently developed. In addition, during a disaster, the Inventory can collect ‘dynamic’ information that can later be used to re-assess the previously generated resilience profile. In this way, stakeholders will be able to analyse the impact of the crisis on the resilience of their community and identify possible new actions, choosing the most effective future intervention and communication strategy.
- The RESILOC Cloud platform – this can be described as a system that enables stakeholders to model and assess resilience for a city or a community, using the information from the Repository. This information is integrated and analysed to assess resilience along up to seven dimensions, combining the physical aspects (e.g. infrastructures) and social features (e.g. demographics) of a community with data on less tangible aspects associated with human behaviour and risk preparedness. The platform enables “what-if” scenarios to be developed so as to model which factors could decrease or increase resilience if they are changed. It includes a set of back-end services for data analysis, a set of GUIs for visualisation and other Software components
- Supplementary technical tools – these aim to supplement the core data collection functions of the Inventory and Cloud platform by enabling additional information to be collected through channels like citizen smartphone Apps, remote sensors and social media.
- Stakeholder support services – these aim to improve the effectiveness of the RESILOC strategic software tools through promoting ‘bench-learning’ between stakeholders, supporting community involvement and engagement in the resilience ‘process’ and providing guidelines and instruments for community-based data collection.
The expected impact of RESILOC apply to different domains. Being a project responding to a topic on “Human factors, and social, societal, and organisational aspects”, it is not limited to the technical innovation in the tools and services that will be developed; it covers very relevant aspects of the way resilience is understood and adopted as a methodology for improving the ability of our societies to be prepared, adaptable, resistant and reactive to disasters and long-term stresses.
RESILOC will not only strengthen the understanding of disaster resilience within disaster-related EU structures and stakeholders, but it will also increase the EU’s capacity for innovation through identifying the best approaches to increase resilience and, therefore, putting technological innovation in focus and ensuring the highest results of their adoption.
With the project implemented, local communities will be able to learn about scenarios, strategies, actions and results in a comparable way. The involvement of communities in the decision process of authorities will also be brought to the forefront
In a nutshell, RESILOC aims to increase the understanding of resilience in local communities and to produce strategic software tools that empower local actors to assess the resilience of their communities and identify actions to increase it.
To do this, RESILOC will develop a Toolkit that consists of four main components:
- The RESILOC Inventory – this can be described as a data ‘shell’ – or Repository – enriched with a set of services which store information on resilience that is provided by local community actors and classify data on the resilience of cities and local communities. The Inventory enables ‘snapshots’ of a community’s resilience profile to be subsequently developed. In addition, during a disaster, the Inventory can collect ‘dynamic’ information that can later be used to re-assess the previously generated resilience profile. In this way, stakeholders will be able to analyse the impact of the crisis on the resilience of their community and identify possible new actions, choosing the most effective future intervention and communication strategy.
- The RESILOC Cloud platform – this can be described as a system that enables stakeholders to model and assess resilience for a city or a community, using the information from the Repository. This information is integrated and analysed to assess resilience along up to seven dimensions, combining the physical aspects (e.g. infrastructures) and social features (e.g. demographics) of a community with data on less tangible aspects associated with human behaviour and risk preparedness. The platform enables “what-if” scenarios to be developed so as to model which factors could decrease or increase resilience if they are changed. It includes a set of back-end services for data analysis, a set of GUIs for visualisation and other Software components
- Supplementary technical tools – these aim to supplement the core data collection functions of the Inventory and Cloud platform by enabling additional information to be collected through channels like citizen smartphone Apps, remote sensors and social media.
- Stakeholder support services – these aim to improve the effectiveness of the RESILOC strategic software tools through promoting ‘bench-learning’ between stakeholders, supporting community involvement and engagement in the resilience ‘process’ and providing guidelines and instruments for community-based data collection.
The expected impact of RESILOC apply to different domains. Being a project responding to a topic on “Human factors, and social, societal, and organisational aspects”, it is not limited to the technical innovation in the tools and services that will be developed; it covers very relevant aspects of the way resilience is understood and adopted as a methodology for improving the ability of our societies to be prepared, adaptable, resistant and reactive to disasters and long-term stresses.
RESILOC will not only strengthen the understanding of disaster resilience within disaster-related EU structures and stakeholders, but it will also increase the EU’s capacity for innovation through identifying the best approaches to increase resilience and, therefore, putting technological innovation in focus and ensuring the highest results of their adoption.