Building Resilient Communities

Emergency preparedness can get you through the first few days following a disaster. But how can your community bounce back over the long term? With disasters becoming more common and costly, and with some areas enduring multiple disasters, the importance of building community resilience has never been greater.

This easy-to-use, self-guided online training shows organizations and communities how to strengthen their resilience. Resilience means:

• mitigating and withstanding the stress of manmade and natural disasters
• recovering in a way that restores normal functioning
• applying lessons learned from past responses to better withstand future incidents.

This training is intended for a diverse range of organizations, including businesses; faith-based organizations; hospitals, health clinics, and other health agencies; mental health providers; schools and universities; civic and volunteer groups; first responders; local government agencies; public health departments; and nonprofit agencies.

When you complete this training, you will have a real action plan to use that will help you build resilience in your organization or across your community, bolstering your capacity to respond to and recover from disaster.

RAND Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment gratefully acknowledges the support of Charles Zwick and the Charles M. and Mary D. Grant Foundation, whose generous donations to RAND helped make this training possible.