Resilience Toolbox

Coastal Resilience  

Coastal Resilience is a global network of practitioners who are applying an approach and web-based mapping tool designed to help communities understand their vulnerability from coastal hazards, reduce their risk and determine the value of nature-based solutions.

Coastal Resilience is a program led by The nature Conservancy. It is an approach which includes a four step process to access and reduce ecological, socio-economic risks of coastal hazards. Through this approach they have developed planning methods, a decision support tool, and web apps that address specific coastal issues.

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Developed by
Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium and NOAA's Coastal Storms Program

Surging Seas  

Sea Level Rise and Extreme Sea Level Analysis Service

This app exposes information from global climate models combined with datasets on vertical land movement on a local level, and shows this with local population density information (which clearly shows the extend of coastal cities), offering opportunities for data presentation previously unavailable to a wider audience.

The extreme sea levels analysis tool includes the latest historical storm surge data for the globe, high tide events, and sea levels changes caused by lower atmospheric pressure and severe winds during storms in climate scenarios.

Aside from the SLR tool, there are other similar tools as part of the same tool developer that analyse other indicators such as climate change scenarios and baseline data generation, drought monitoring, heat index, etc.

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Developed by
Climate Central

PCVA  

Participatory Capacity and Vulnerability Analysis

Oxfam’s participatory capacity and vulnerability analysis (PCVA) tool is a risk analysis process designed to help staff and partner organisations engage with communities in contexts where natural disasters are significant drivers of poverty and suffering. PCVA has its roots in two proven social development methodologies. First, it stems from capacity and vulnerability analysis (CVA) methodology. This has long enabled development and humanitarian aid workers to design programmes based on a community’s capacities as well as its vulnerabilities. It recognises that vulnerable people have capacities to cope with adversity and can take steps to improve their lives, however difficult their situation may be. Second, it is rooted in the belief that enabling communities to genuinely participate in programme design, planning, and management leads to increased ownership, accountability and impact, and is the best way to bring about change. PCVA draws on a wide range of participatory learning and action (PLA) techniques and tools that are designed to channel participants’ ideas and efforts into a structured process of analysis, learning, and action planning, with the overall aim of reducing a community’s disaster risk.

Developed by
Oxfam

CityStrength Diagnostic  

CityStrength is a rapid diagnostic that aims to help cities enhance their resilience to a variety of shocks and stresses. A qualitative assessment developed with support from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the diagnostic takes a holistic and integrated approach and encourages collaboration between sectors to more efficiently tackle issues and unlock opportunities within the city. CityStrength is flexible and can adapt to different needs of clients in terms of depth and breadth, and can be implemented in any city or combination of cities within a country regardless of size, institutional capacity, or phase of development.

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Developed by
The World Bank

FAUC®  

The Framework for Acting under Uncertainty and Complexity

The FAUC framework focuses on Five Capacities of an Organization:

• Entrepreneurial
• Alert
• Adaptive
• Resilient
• Creative

It helps to find weak spots and enables organizations to act effectively in complex and uncertain environments.

The FAUC® is delivered through two products: FAUC® PLAY and FAUC® Assessment. The approach of the FAUC©PLAY is interactive. The FAUC©PLAY uses structured dialogue, playing and the wisdom of people involved. The FAUC© assessment uses both quantitative and qualitative information and the wisdom of people involved.

Developed by
GLOCOMNET

UCRA  

The Urban Community Resilience Assessment

The Urban Community Resilience Assessment (UCRA) helps cities incorporate individual and community capacities—social cohesion, familiarity with local climate risks, early warning systems and disaster readiness—into broader urban resilience evaluations. By analysing these local capabilities, the UCRA provides a snapshot of preparedness behaviours, risk perception and the strength of neighbourhood relationships. These findings enable individuals to identify context-specific adaptation actions and allow policymakers to engage community members in urban resilience planning.

Developed by
World Resources Institute (WRI) and Cities Alliance

WEDG  

Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines

WEDG employs an evidence-based approach, focusing on three key pillars of excellent waterfront design:

1. Resilience: Reduce risks or be adaptable to the effects of sea level rise and increased coastal flooding, through setbacks, structural protection, and other integrative landscaping measures.
2. Ecology: Protect existing aquatic habitats and use designs, materials, and shoreline configurations to improve the ecological function of the coastal zone, and strive to be consistent with regional ecological goals.
3. Access: Be equitable and informed by the community, enhancing public access, supporting a diversity of uses, from maritime, recreation, and commerce where appropriate, thereby maximizing the diversity of the harbour and waterfront.

Developed by
Waterfront Alliance

Resilence Atlas  

The Resilience Atlas was developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to identify where projects should take place and allow users to derive insights of their own based on data. The developers believed that policymakers and donors needed to know where problems were occurring to know where to make investments.

The Resilience Atlas is an interactive analytical tool for building:

1. Understanding of the extent and severity of some of the key stressors and shocks that are affecting rural livelihoods, production systems, and ecosystems in the Sahel, Horn of Africa and South and Southeast Asia;
2. Insights into the ways that different types of wealth and assets (i.e. natural capital, human capital, social capital, financial capital and manufactured capital) and combinations among these – impact resilience in particular contexts.

The tool is a web-based open source mapping platform.

To date, the tool has been used at the national level, but there are opportunities to use the data at a more localized level. Data is available for all countries. This tool is primarily used in places where capacity for remote sensing and GIS is lower. “

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Developed by
Conservation International

Elephant Builder  

The Elephant Builder is Bellwether Collaboratory’s collaborative modeling tool for multi-stakeholder planning processes. Governments and nonprofits use the Elephant Builder to engage experts and community members in an authentically inclusive manner, as stakeholders build and analyze causal models of the community systems of interest.

The modeling process requires little training and can accommodate stakeholders across a broad range of technical sophistication and confidence: models are built node by node, the Elephant Builder asking simple cause-and-effect questions. Once the model is completed, the Elephant Builder guides stakeholders through the identification of causal pathways, system vulnerabilities, feedback loops, and recommended actions. Users can also parameterize the model with quantitative variable-states and probabilistic causal relationships, allowing the Elephant Builder to act as an AI-backed scenario-testing tool.

The Elephant Builder has been used to examine critical lifeline interdependencies in Los Angeles (Susanne Moser Research and Consulting and U.S. Geological Survey), food systems in New York state (SUNY Albany School of Public Health), and community resilience in Larimer County, Colorado (Larimer County Office of Emergency Management).

Developed by
Bellweather Collaboratory

RELi  

The Resilience Action List (RELi) standard

The RELi 2.0 Rating System (RELi 2.0) is a holistic, resilience-based rating system that combines innovative design criteria with the latest in integrative design processes for next-generation neighborhoods, buildings, homes and infrastructure. By selectively bundling existing sustainable and regenerative guidelines with RELi’s ground-breaking credits for emergency preparedness, adaptation, and community vitality, RELi 2.0 is the most comprehensive reference guide and certification available anywhere for socially and environmentally resilient design and construction.

Since 2017, RELi has been managed by the U.S. Green Building Council, Inc. (USGBC) which, in conjunction with Market Transformation to Sustainability, is leading the evolution of RELi 2.0 to synthesize the LEED Resilient Design pilot credits with RELi’s Hazard Mitigation and Adaptation credits. RELi 2.0 certification is based on a point system. The number of points that a project earns determines the certification level it receives.

Developed by
Various

EARTH EX  

EARTH EX simulates global-scale disruption, with long duration power outages and cascading failures of all other infrastructures. It offers executive and senior level operational decision makers the opportunity to review critical decision-making policies, processes, roles and responsibilities – essential to the success of all other response and recovery operations.

The exercise is designed for self-evaluation, with distributed play conducted using electronic tools, and local facilitation for feedback and execution.

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Developed by
Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council

EDGe$  

Economic Decision Guide Software

NIST had created EDGe$, based on the process found in the Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (EDG) and designed for use in conjunction with the NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (CRPG). EDGe$ is intended for community planners, resilience and budget officers, and the public.

The tool provides a transparent and flexible economic methodology based on best-practices for evaluating investment decisions aimed at improving the ability of communities to adapt to, withstand, and quickly recover from natural, technological, and human-caused disruptive events. The tool helps to identify and compare the relevant present and future resilience costs and benefits associated with new capital investment alternatives versus maintaining a community’s status-quo.

The case studies cited in the user manual are derived from the United States and the tool was developed with the United States context in mind.

Developed by
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Envision  

Envision is a groundbreaking resource for professionals involved in planning, designing, building, maintaining civil infrastructure. As a rating system for sustainable infrastructure, Envision is supported by a wide array of respected organisations involved in infrastructure design, construction, and operation.

Envision provides guidance on sustainable best practices at no cost to users, and serves not only as a planning and design tool, but also as means of evaluating infrastructure project once complete.

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Developed by
ISI and Zonfnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure (Harvard University)

Equitable Origin  

Equitable Origin Platform

Tool 1: EO100™ Standard for Responsible Energy Development

The EO100™ Standard for Responsible Energy Development provides a framework for implementing and verifying enhanced environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, greater transparency, more accountability, and better outcomes for local stakeholders in energy development projects. The EO100™ Standard represents leading industry practices and references international standards for evaluating site-level ESG performance of energy and energy infrastructure projects.

The EO100™ Standard encompasses the following Principles:

• Corporate Governance, Transparency & Ethics
• Human Rights, Social Impact & Community Development
• Indigenous People’s Rights
• Fair Labor & Working Conditions
• Climate Change, Biodiversity & Environment

Tool 2: Equitable Origin Platform

The Equitable Origin (EO) Platform is a one-stop resource that provides energy companies, utilities, investors, and corporate power purchasers with essential tools to effectively implement and track due diligence and compliance within their operations, supply chains, and investment portfolios. The EO100™ Performance Assessment provides a quick, easy, and efficient way to measure the performance of energy and energy infrastructure projects and suppliers of energy against a comprehensive and customizable range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) indicators.

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Developed by
Equitable Origin

CAESAR  

Cascading Effect Simulation in Urban Areas to Access and Increase Resilience

The Tool CAESAR (Cascading Effect Simulation in urban Areas to assess and increase Resilience) addresses the need to better understand the cascading effects of major disasters in connected and interdependent urban infrastructure systems. CAESAR has the capacity to identify the most vulnerable components within individual infrastructure grids and it allows to assess potential damages within the grid as well as within coupled grids. In addition, the tool is capable to simulate mitigation strategies and their effectiveness beyond single grid boundaries. Required input parameters can be adjusted to the level of the available information enabling analyses on varying levels of detail. The tool can be applied to vital infrastructure grids such as energy, transport and telecommunication.

Developed by
Fraunhhofer EMI

CRI  

City Resilience Index

The City Resilience Index is the first comprehensive tool for cities to understand and assess their resilience, enhancing their ability to build sound strategies and plans for a strong future. Through an online platform, it uses a comprehensive, holistic framework that is applicable at the city scale – one that combined the physical aspects of cities with intangible aspects associated with human behaviour which are often relevant in the context of economic, physical and social disruption. It is developed by Arup with support from The Rockefeller Foundation.

Developed by
ARUP