Activity 3: Continue Planning
Resilience is a process and planning is a cycle. That means that once you have reached the end of the planning steps, you assess your progress and continue to plan and implement strategies in a continuing effort to increase community disaster resilience. Once your planning cycle is completed and the implementation period is over, it’s time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
This is also a time to evaluate whether your community profile and your risk and resilience assessment may need to be revised. Consider whether there have been any changes in your community (e.g., new community members, the loss of some residents, changes in employment or economic profile, changes in governance) that might influence your assessment of strengths and vulnerabilities. Consider whether any of your risks have changed (e.g., environmental or development changes that increase or decrease risk). Finally, consider whether your community’s resilience profile has changed either as a result of your resilience enhancement actions or because of any other changes in your community, region or province/territory. Remember that resilience is process. There is no end state. Resilience evolves as your community evolves and changes over time.
This process of re-evaluating starts the planning cycle again. Make changes to your plan that are based on your progress, and revise your approach and strategies as necessary. During the implementation of your plan, you may find that some strategies were not as effective as you originally thought. Or some actions you took might be having an unanticipated negative impact. The planning team should make necessary adjustments in goals, activities, and time frames in the effort to reach your community vision and resilience goals. You may also need to identify other resources to implement new activities and targets.
Planning becomes easier over time. All the information you have gathered, for example, will feed into the next cycle. The community vision should stay the same, as well as most of the long-term goals. You may choose to collect additional information that you didn’t have time for the first time around. You may decide to include an assessment of other hazards or to concentrate on the same priority areas. By committing to ongoing planning and implementation, your community will experience a growing awareness of its resilience and be better prepared for disaster.
