Communities

The Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) believes that resilient communities are the foundation of a strong and resilient nation.  Community resilience encompasses an entire community (physical infrastructure, economic and social capital, natural environment,  and systems/essential services) and its ability to resist and/or rapidly recover from extreme events.  Over the last three years, CARRI has worked to understand how these aspects of resilience combine and interact to effect the reslience of communities.  By combining the results from a cadre of distinguished researchers and insights from communities, CARRI has brought to life a uniqe viewpoint on what it means to be a resilient community. Collectively, these participants have articulated four critical needs to improve community resilience. 

An understanding of community resilience has now advanced to a place where a national conversation is imperative.  In 2010 CARRI convened a distinct group of representatives (academia, private sector, faith-based, non-governmental, and all levels of government) to embark on the Community Resilience System Initiative (CRSI), a comprehensive undertaking to articulate the common understanding of community resilience and ultimately build a national System aimed at helping  communities.  CARRI strives to be the catalyst of a practical community resilience system that will contribute to a national culture of resilience by working with stakeholders  to create the structure, processes, and tools to encourage, support, and reward community resilience. CARRI is organized into five divisions (as depicted below) and is available to assist communities, leaders and policy makers at all levels.