Community and Regional Resilience Institute

When powerful Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in August 2005, it devastated homes, businesses, and ecosystems. In the aftermath, elected leaders from the region asked how to ensure that future storms would not wreak such catastrophic havoc. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) supported the establishment of the Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to catalyze a critical national conversation: what is community resilience, and how do we build it?

Working in partnership with Meridian, CARRI sponsored new research to define community resilience. Through a series of facilitated work groups, we engaged community leaders in Gulfport, Mississippi; Charleston, South Carolina; and Memphis, Tennessee to identify core characteristics of resilience based on those cities’ experiences preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters.

Building on those insights, Meridian convened and facilitated a national initiative involving over 150 subject matter experts and community leaders. The initiative developed a user-friendly decision support tool – the Community Resilience System (CRS)—which helped communities assess and improve their resilience. Meridian began serving as CARRI’s secretariat in 2011 and helped adapt the CRS for colleges campuses. The Campus Resilience Enhancement System (CaRES) was designed to help campuses anticipate and respond to unique threats.

The knowledge and tools generated through CARRI’s work continue to influence how researchers and practitioners approach resilience-building. Today, CARRI’s legacy is most evident in the premise of the Alliance for National and Community Resilience (ANCR) and the research activities of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University.