EPA's Equitable Resilience Builder Tool: Demonstration for Planners

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a resilience planning tool that provides structure and support for respectful and inclusive community engagement: the Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) tool. By incorporating best practices into activity guidance, the tool provides advice for engaging with communities, incorporating local knowledge in hazard and resilience assessments, and conducting activities to collaboratively prioritize and implement actions that improve equity and resilience.

This presentation is a live demonstration of the ERB, a downloadable application created by an interdisciplinary team at the EPA using human-centered design techniques. It helps local resilience planners incorporate community voices with resilience and vulnerability data in planning processes.

ERB guides users toward equitably engaging communities on resilience, addressing both disasters and climate change. It includes techniques for inclusive community engagement, trauma-informed approaches, guides for storytelling workshops, and strategies for evaluating hazards, equity, and resilience that combine local knowledge and priorities with other data sources. ERB is unique in its combination of qualitative and quantitative data and processes.