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Development and Implementation of the Community Resilience Planning Guides

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Purpose

Community resilience addresses the intersection of social science, engineering, economics, and other disciplines to improve the way communities prepare for, resist, respond to, and recover from disruptive hazard events. 

This project focuses on the role that buildings and infrastructure contribute to community resilience. It examines how their performance impacts social and economic well-being and how these factors can guide the design of the built environment. NIST’s community resilience guidance documents and tools to support resilience planning for communities. Collaboration with communities, professional organizations, and government agencies informs future documents and tools.

When communities decide to become more resilient, they need an approach that helps them identify and prioritize options consistent with their goals. The Guide helps communities do that by focusing on the role of the built environment in enabling the community to recover rapidly from disruption. It provides a clear process for communities to better prepare for the future. See Full Project Description.

The following stories are prime examples of how the NIST Community Resilience Group is helping communities across the country prepare for a more resilient future.

Fort Collins, Colorado

Nashua, New Hampshire

Boulder County Collaborative, Colorado

Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and Southampton Township, New Jersey (in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development)

Joplin, Missouri; Galveston, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah (in partnership with the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning)

Objective

Publish updated community resilience planning and 
decision-making guidance documents that are supported by natural hazard and resilience planning & analysis tools, based on collaboration and engagement with end-user communities, professional organizations, and government agencies. 

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Products

NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems

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The NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (Guide) provides a practical and flexible approach to help all communities improve their resilience by setting priorities and allocating resources to manage risks for their prevailing hazards. Volume I of the Guide describes the six-step planning process and provides a worked example to illustrate the process. Volume II is a resource that describes how to characterize the social and economic dimensions of the community, dependencies and cascading consequences, and building and infrastructure performance. Using the Guide can help communities to integrate consistent resilience goals into their comprehensive, economic development, zoning, mitigation, and other local planning activities that impact buildings, public utilities, and other infrastructure systems.

The Guide Briefs (GB) provide methods and best practices to complement the Guide, with additional rationale, guidance, and references for implementing the six steps in the planning process.  The Briefs are numbered in the order that they are released.

General Guidance

GB 7 - Guide Use By All Community Types 
Español: Uso de la Guía para todos los tipos de comunidades    

GB 15 - Additional Applications of the Community Resilience Planning Guide

Step 1: Form a Collaborative Planning Team
GB 14 - Forming a Collaborative Planning Team and Engaging the Community

Step 2: Understand the Situation

GB 1 - Characterize the Population 
Español: Informe de Referencia 1: Caracterización de la Población                       

GB 2 - Identify Social Institutions 
Español: Identificación de las instituciones sociales                          

GB 5 - Assessing Energy System Dependencies
Español: Evaluación de las dependencias del sistema energético

GB 6 - How Communities Can Work with Communication Service Providers to Understand Communication Systems
Español: De qué manera las comunidades pueden trabajar junto con los proveedores de servicios de comunicaciones para entender los sistemas de comunicación

GB 10 - Linking Social Dimensions and Building Clusters
Español: Vinculación de las dimensiones sociales y los grupos de edificios

Step 3: Determine Goals and Objectives 

GB 4 - Determining Anticipated Performance
Español: Determinar el desempeño previsto

GB 4A - Example for Determining Anticipated Performance
Español: Ejemplo para determinar el desempeño previsto

GB 9 - Summarizing Resilience Goals using Performance Goals Tables
Español: Resumen de los objetivos de resiliencia mediante tablas de objetivos de desempeño

GB 11 - Determining Building Cluster Performance Goals
Español: Determinación de los objetivos de desempeño de los grupos de edificios

Step 4: Plan Development

GB 3 - Existing Community Resilience Activities Identifying Solutions to Address Resilience Gaps
Español: Actividades existentes de resiliencia comunitaria Identificación de soluciones para abordar brechas de resiliencia

GB 8 - Overcoming Myths about Community Resilience Planning
Español: Derribar mitos sobre la planificación de resiliencia comunitaria

GB 13 - Resilience Gaps – Identifying and Prioritizing Closure of Resilience Gaps
Español: Brechas de resiliencia – Identificación y priorización del cierre de las brechas de resiliencia

Step 5: Plan Preparation, Review, and Approval

Step 6: Plan Implementation and Maintenance

GB 12 - Short-Term Implementation Tasks
Español: Tareas de implementación a corto plazos

Planning Guide Playbook

An open book with X's and O's on the pages

The companion Playbook is designed to be a practical, action-focused aid that helps communities follow the Guide’s six-step process. It can support communities looking for insights into resilience planning issues and help identify the most effective resilience-improvement projects. It can be used independently or with expert support and also provides ways to involve experts in the planning and implementation processes. The Playbook helps ensure all communities can benefit from the Guide’s planning approach.

Step 1: Form a Collaborative Planning Team

Templates

Step 2: Understand the Situation

Templates
External Resources

Step 3: Determine Goals and Objectives

Templates
External Resources

Step 4 - 6: No Templates 

Related Publications and Links

Related Federal Disaster Recovery & Mitigation Planning

Contacts

General Information

Created April 24, 2015, Updated September 24, 2025
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