How Can Planners Build Resilient Communities?

Few planners realize how they can use their role to shape their community’s resilience to natural hazards. Over the past six years, the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS) has gained traction in Texas and nationally, as a method and tool for helping communities build resilience to natural hazards by spatially evaluating their networks of plans. Its past application to multiple communities – including in Rockport, Texas after Hurricane Harvey – demonstrates a method for revealing plan alignment and conflict, and where opportunities exist to build community resilience.

This session introduces participants to the existing PIRS tool in order to launch into a substantive dialogue about future ways to enhance and integrate it into professional practice. Among improvements we will explore are the possibilities of building connections and credits with existing risk reduction rating systems, integrating cost-benefit and equity analyses to ensure that future actions and resources are prioritized to areas with the greatest impact, and expansion of the tool to assess a wider variety of disasters and utilization in a wider range of professional areas.