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Community Disaster Resilience Planning

People move, landscapes and the environment change, industries come and go, and disasters will still occur. Rural, remote, First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities have been affected by hurricanes, wildfires, water contamination and an assortment of other hazards. Culture, language, livelihood options and Traditional Knowledge have flourished in some areas, while other communities have faced numerous challenges.

Building community disaster resilience is an ongoing, year-round process aimed at strengthening a community’s ability to respond to disaster. This site guides you and your community team through the Community Disaster Resilience Planning (CDRP) process.

Create an account

To begin, create an account. Once you have created your account you will have access to all the tools and resources to guide your planning process. You will be able to add communities or zones you wish to build a plan for and add community team members to support and contribute to the process.

Access Hazards Assessment Tools
Access Community Inventory Tools
Access Hazard and Community Resiliency Tools
Define Maps and Community Borders
Develop and Implement Resiliency Plan
Access Community Impact Tool

Set up planning team

The Community Planning Team is the group who will gather the information necessary to assess the community’s disaster resilience and who will draft a plan for enhancing resilience.

The very first step in the planning process is to identify who will be involved in the process. This first activity focuses on creating a team based on some of the recommendations outlined below and in the resources.

The best size and makeup of the community planning team is 3-4 individuals who are committed to the process

Working Together Building a Community Team

Working Together Building a Community Team (pdf)

How to Setup a Community Planning Team

Start building your plan

Once you have signed in and set up your community you are ready to engage in the process of moving towards disaster resiliency. The Disaster Risk and Resilience tools will increase your community’s understanding of hazards and community resiliency. With this added knowledge, your community will become stronger, healthier, experience sustainable growth, and be better able to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The CDRP program contains a vast amount of information and is broken down into various sections that can be worked through in a manageable format. There are three key sections which include a number of activities and are accompanied by additional resources to support your progress.

Community Information

The CDRP resilience assessment process depends upon a full understanding of the community to be able to evaluate the challenges and the strengths it can draw upon to decrease risk and build greater resilience. This section hosts various activities to set up a planning team; identify community boundaries with features and sites of importance; and collect community information, skills, and knowledge.

CDRP Community Profile (pdf)CDRP Collecting Information (pdf)CDRP Community Mapping (pdf)

Hazards and Resiliency Tools

There are three main tools used to assess your community's hazard risk and resiliency levels. Two of the tools support understanding the hazards that are likely to occur, the underlying risk factors, and the community resiliency towards specific hazards. The third tool supports a common understanding of the community's overall state of resilience, disaster management preparedness, and the resources within the community.

Hazard Risk Analysis Overview and Instructions (pdf)Hazard Resilience Index Overview and Instructions (pdf)Community Resilience Index Overview and Instructions (pdf)

Develop and Implement Community Resiliency Plan

This section will support analyzing the data collected from the tools and gathered from the community information section to build and develop your community's disaster resilience plan. Based on the community’s goals, vision, potential hazards, and risk ratings, the activities in this section will help the community to conclude an impact and risk assessment, identify strategies to prioritize, and determine action plans for the short or long term.

Review our guides and resources

There are several resources to support and guide you through the process. You can download all the instructions, resources, guides, and tools for reference, or to use if you prefer to work offline.

This also includes:

Getting Started: Resiliency Planning Guide
Glossary
Traditional Knowledge Toolkit

The CDRP map below provides you with a visual representation of the journey towards achieving disaster resiliency for your community.

More Resources