About the Resilient-C Platform
The Resilient Coasts Canada Platform, commonly referred to as Resilient-C, is a free online tool created to help Canadian coastal communities build hazards resilience. Resilient-C helps interested communities to discover other communities across the country that share similar hazard vulnerabilities, similar community profiles, or similar approaches to resilience-building so that they can connect and learn from one another. The platform relies upon an expanding dataset that includes information for over 180 coastal communities across six Canadian provinces.
The platform combines data on three distinct aspects of coastal communities:
- The coastal hazards to which communities are exposed;
- Indicators of community hazard vulnerability and resilience; and
- A collection of the actions communities have undertaken to address current and future hazard threats.
What is the Goal of the Resilient-C Platform?
The primary goal of the Resilient-C platform is to facilitate knowledge sharing among coastal communities to encourage the adoption of planning policies that promote coastal risk reduction and adaptation strategies. The platform allows coastal communities to identify "peer" communities that share similar hazard exposure and risk vulnerability characteristics. These communities can then learn about the different actions and strategies their peers have implemented, connect with key community contacts, and ultimately work together to enhance coastal hazard resilience across Canada.
Who Will Get the Most out of Resilient-C?
The Resilient-C platform is open to anyone to use, but we believe it will be most useful to community planners, engineers, disaster management professionals, and members of NGOs that focus on coastal hazard risk reduction planning in Canadian communities.
Resilient-C can provide researchers and professionals with rapid and easy access to key hazard vulnerability indicators for performing disaster risk assessments, emergency management planning, and long-term growth planning. Contact information provided for the communities included on the platform can also help communities facing similar hazard landscapes to connect directly with each other to establish resilience networks and facilitate knowledge exchange.
How Does Resilient-C Work?
We have learned from discussions with planners, engineers, and hazard management professionals working in communities vulnerable to coastal hazards that they often look to what other communities are doing to determine which risk reduction efforts might be might relevant and effective for them. However, not all communities have the financial capacity or human resources needed to discover the peer communities most likely to have the ideas and experience most suited to their needs. Resilient-C seeks to make identifying similar communities quick and easy, and to facilitate connections between communities.
To do this, Resilient-C uses 25 indicators to establish hazard vulnerability profiles for more than 180 coastal communities in Canada. The platform determines the similarities for any given community based on these profiles, and can refine searches to focus only on communities that are exposed to specific hazards or have undertaken specific disaster risk reduction approaches. From there, users can explore the list of actions peer communities have taken to increase their hazard resilience and use the contact information provided to connect directly with the communities to learn more.
To learn more about the modelling and science behind Resilient-C platform, please see our research introduction or watch the videos about the platform.
How Can Resilient-C Help My Community Become More Resilient?
Resilient-C can be used to:
- Identify other coastal communities that share similar hazard exposure and vulnerability profiles as your own;
- Discover risk reduction strategies that peer communities have already implemented;
- Learn about best practices that have been discovered while implementing risk reduction efforts in peer communities;
- Identify gaps in your community's disaster risk management planning;
- Identify geospatial vulnerability clusters based on selected criteria;
- Identify shared hazards risks and vulnerabilities with nearby communities that might be addressed through collaborative efforts; and
- Encourage partnerships and collaborations between communities across the country to share lessons learned, best practices discovered, and work together towards improved coastal hazards resilience.
How is the Research Behind Resilient-C Funded?
Much of the work related to Resilient-C is funded by the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network, a Network Centre of Excellence in Canada. Hosting for the platform is provided by the University of British Columbia, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.