This content was originally published on The Resilience Shift website. The Resilience Shift, a 5-year programme supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation and hosted by Arup, transitioned at the end of 2021 to become Resilience Rising. You can read more about The Resilience Shift’s journey and the transition to Resilience Rising here.
The Resilience Shift has agreed a partnership to support Resilience First, a London-based not-for-profit initiative. Launched as an offshoot of “London First’, Resilience First is an initiative to improve urban resilience for business communities in the UK and beyond. It is led and funded by business, and the Resilience Shift will support the network as one of several founding Champion organisations.
Juliet Mian, Technical Director, Resilience Shift, said: “The work of Resilience First, which focuses on resilient business communities complements the Resilience Shift’s areas of focus. Infrastructure systems can be defined as “socio-technical” systems. The role of the business communities, as well as the wider society that rely on these systems, is an essential part of their resilience.”
“We know that resilience can’t be delivered through technical measures alone. We hope that we can continue to build and grow our respective networks whilst mutually benefiting from joined-up action on common areas of interest”.
Resilience First aims to enable and equip urban business communities so they can respond positively to recurring and unexpected challenges. The initiative is a bottom-up approach that creates a solid base of local resilience, whether by geography or special interest, using generic frameworks and tools.
Initial work on a business district in London and a major airport outside the capital, as well as the design of an on-line app for sharing resilience information, has already attracted support from more than a dozen international organisations.
They believe that recovering from short-term disruptions – “bouncing back’ to business as usual – is no longer sufficient for today’s needs. In the face of unprecedented challenges and stresses, the question that businesses are now asking is how do they “bounce forward’ to a new level of increased competitiveness and improved sustainability for the long term.
Robert Hall, Executive Director, Resilience First, said, “Working with partners like The Resilience Shift, we will create a wholly new approach to business community resilience which draws on the collective experience of our networks. It will support city-wide plans and protocols as well as complement general infrastructure projects that serve our business communities to build a more robust working environment.”
To kick off our partnership on 31 January 2019, the Resilience Shift is hosting a Breakfast Briefing: Standards in Resilience for Resilience First. Speakers include Caroline Field (MMI Thornton Tomasetti) and Dr Rob MacFarlane (Cabinet Office), introduced by Will Goode, Programme Manager Resilience Shift, and Robert Hall, Executive Director Resilience First. Find out more.