The Community Resilience Panel Transitions to a Workshop Format

Note: Several recent media reports have inaccurately described NIST’s decision to conclude the Panel’s efforts and transition to a workshop format to achieve the goals initially set by NIST. That decision was made solely by NIST’s Engineering Laboratory to optimize the use of resources and the participants’ time. In addition, the Panel was originally proposed as one component of the NIST community resilience program, which includes developing multiple planning guides and tools for communities along with economics and measurement science tools – efforts which will continue. It also is important to note that the Panel and the broader NIST community resilience program were designed to consider resilience to all hazards, whether natural, technical, or human-caused.

Following the November 2017 Community Resilience Panel meeting, NIST conducted an assessment of the Panel and its mission and determined that, while the Panel has made progress on achieving its first goal of promoting collaboration among stakeholders, the second goal of considering standards and best practices has been much more challenging.

NIST has therefore decided to transition to a national workshop as a more effective and efficient way to convene stakeholders and advance community resilience. NIST anticipates holding a workshop by Fall 2018 to continue to meet the Panel’s original goals. The workshop will:

• Build upon the Panel’s work to date, including standards, guidelines, best practices, and tools identified by the Panel as potential entries for the Resilience Knowledge Base. 
• Identify priority community resilience research, development, and implementation needs.
• Emphasize representation and input from key stakeholder organizations, including Panel cosponsors and members as well as other relevant organizations.

Particulars about the workshop, including whether additional sessions would be helpful in future years, will be determined by NIST and stakeholders. We hope that the workshop format will be a more efficient and effective means to advance the Panel mission and goals, and we look forward to continuing this collaboration under a workshop format.

NIST greatly appreciates the time and energy devoted by Panel leaders and members over the past two years. We and the other cosponsors learned a lot along the way, and believe that members did as well. Records of past Panel deliberations and meetings – including many valuable presentations by community resilience leaders around the country – will be maintained on this website for the foreseeable future.