What are Resilience Hubs?
Resilience Hubs are spaces and places collaboratively developed to improve community readiness before, during and after disasters. To test this, a Playbook was drafted with three distinct community partners in New York State. From their feedback and the call from Governor Hochul to grow Community Resilience Hubs, we built this resource open for all to use.
How is this Playbook different from other resources? The question “how do we sustainably and equitably operationalize Resilience Hubs?” is posed by our local and state partners. In this lens we are working with community partners to develop and test a Playbook that any community can use.
Who is this Playbook for?
This playbook can be for any group of people looking to enhance disaster resilience in their community, whether that group is 10, 100, or thousands of people. The Playbook was initially developed and tested with small teams (fewer than 10 people) representing medium-sized organizations (10-50 staff) who serve thousands of people in small and/or rural communities in New York State. We hope it is useful for groups of other types as well, spanning neighborhoods and mobile home communities up to big-city governments. It is provided open access so that others may build upon it.
How long does it take?
Every group is different. The Playbook is paced so that each Module takes one hour of together time, and then the participants spend a few hours over the following month on their action items. However, it is important to note that groups of people have different amounts of time available to spend on this project and teams may want to spend more time digging into the activities and their own operations. It is also important to note that different groups will spend different amounts of time on each Module. Some groups might have already collected information needed for one Module and speed through it, while others might decide they need to conduct an extensive community-engagement campaign to complete that module. It is all really up to that community, their capacity to engage, and every part of this process is intended to be adaptive to the needs of the community, not that the community adapt to fit the Playbook.
What flexibility is there for our community to tailor the engagement?
The Appendix provides additional resources and pathways for each Module. This playbook is written for participants to have an hour to meet and some participants will do independent work between meetings; some groups may want more time or a different approach. The Appendix has versions if some or all participants are connecting electronically, or if you have more time available to work collaboratively, or if there are other perspectives you want to include. The Appendix also has alternate templates and some case studies to give real world examples of these tools being used in practice. The Appendix is constantly growing and being updated and is accessed through the website.
Thank you for your collaboration in contributing to this Playbook. Please let us know if there are any questions, ideas, or examples of using the playbook: resiliencehubs@cornell.edu.
News and Media
Research Team
Faculty Co-PIs:
- Rebecca Morgenstern Brenner
Associate Teaching Professor, Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell University
- Alistair Hayden
Professor of Practice, Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, Cornell University
Student Research Interns:
- Alyssa Coleman
- Devin Chen
- Jie Zhao
