Community Resilience Assessment Programs

Programs that help communities assess their ability to adapt well when confronted with adversity, their capacity to bounce back from a catastrophic health event, an act of terrorism, a natural disaster or other threats that affect the entire community and have the potential to overwhelm local resources. Resilient communities actively prepare for a crisis by anticipating the economic, social, political and environmental changes that may occur and determine in advance how they can draw upon the strengths that made them a healthy community as a means of buffering the impact of an incident and reestablishing stability. A variety of tools are available to support the assessment process. Community resilience assessment can also be used in other contexts including economic, community and neighborhood development.