RESILIENCE FIRST- Helping to Make Business Communities Stronger

Resilience First is a project that is designed to make the difference between success and failure for an urban business community facing severe disruption by collectively anticipating and preparing for shocks and stresses, absorbing and mitigating the knocks and adapting to the new situation by modifying behaviours and culture before, during and after the interruptions.

Resilience First aims to create an exchange of influential leaders who can improve urban resilience in local areas (business districts) through innovation, integration and prosperity for all - making a city better prepared to resist disruptions but become more agile in coping with future challenges. It targets:

• To provide leadership and dialogue in the concepts and practices that underpin resilience.
• To strengthen the proactive enablers that allow cities and business communities to become more resilient through better physical, procedural and communal attributes.
• To facilitate the access to, and promotion of, advice relevant to becoming more resilient for organisations and business communities.
• To provide a means to benchmark resilience in communities so that they can see their status and progress (through data collection and analytics).
• To provide a channel to market for professional providers and services.

UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) is supporting the launch of Resilience First and is helping it to achieve the goal.