Essential 10: Expedite Recovery and Build Back Better
Deals with post disaster recovery – restarting life or economic activity in the city or building, executing repairs and learning from what happened to enable an improved response next time around.
Essential 9: Ensure Effective Disaster Response
Addresses the effectiveness and completeness of disaster preparations by the city or building owner/manager, in conjunction with those of the city and other agencies.
Essential 8: Increase Infrastructure Resilience
Addresses how well the critical infrastructure systems within the city or around the building/facility will cope with the natural and man-made hazards/shocks they might experience, and how adaptive measures and contingencies have been developed to manage the risks.
Essential 7: Increase Social and Cultural Resilience
Examines the effectiveness of community engagement in building resilience.
Essential 6: Strengthen Institutional Capacity for Resilience
Addresses the capability of cities or building owners/managers to identify risks and plan, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. There are two broad areas – skills; and information sharing, availability and access.
Essential 5: Safeguard National Buffers
Addresses the extent to which the city or building preserves or, even better, enhances the protective functions offered by natural ecosystems.
Essential 4: Pursue Resilient Urban Development
Addresses the development and application to the building of land use zoning and building codes that meet or exceed resilience requirements.
Essential 3: Strengthen Financial Capacity for Resilience
Addresses the “financial architecture” of disaster resilience – funding it, budgeting for it and protecting those funds.
Essential 2: Identify, Understand, and Use Current and Future Risk Scenarios
Assesses the understanding of disaster risks or hazards that the city or building owner/manager has.
Essential 1: Organize for Resilience
Assesses the existence of an effective organization and planning focus within the city, or building ownership/management, and its effectiveness in collaboration and sharing of information with internal and external stakeholders.