Community & Regional Resilience Initiative

Communities

The Community and Regional Resilience Initiative (CARRI) is a major program of The Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI).

With the support of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CARRI is a groundbreaking program being led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in conjunction with a variety of other federal, regional, state and local partners.

The goal of CARRI is to help develop and then share critical paths that any community or region may take to strengthen its ability to prepare for, respond to, and rapidly recover from significant man-made or natural disasters with minimal downtime to basic community, government and business services.

When a community is truly resilient, it should be able to avoid the cascading system failures to help minimize any disaster’s disruption to everyday life and the local economy. A resilient community is not only prepared to help prevent or minimize the loss or damage to life, property and the environment, but also it has the ability to quickly return citizens to work, reopen businesses, and restore other essential services needed for a full and swift economic recovery.

Characteristics of a Resilient Community

IT ANTICIPATES: problems, opportunities, potentials for surprises

IT REDUCES VULNERABILITIES: related to development paths, socio-economic conditions, sensitivities to possible threats

IT RESPONDS: effectively, fairly, and legitimately

IT RECOVERS: rapidly, better, safer and fairer (objectives which may not align perfectly, calling for widespread community participation in strategy development)

In the words of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff:

"... we have to focus on resiliency as well as preparedness -- that means the community's ability to rebound and restore critical government and business functions after a disaster occurs. To that end we've provided funding to organizations like the Southeast Region Research Initiative to study and increase resiliency in our cities and other communities. "

"Our goal here is to make sure that if, despite the best preventive and preparedness efforts, a disaster strikes, we can get back up and running and recover, as quickly as possible. And some of these efforts are now underway in Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina, working to increase community resiliency through SERRI-directed research."

For general questions regarding CARRI, please click the following link: info@resilientUS.org