Equitable Resilience Builder
Supports communities in resilience planning with a focus on equity
The Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) is an application that supports communities in resilience planning with a focus on equity. It contains guidance and templates for conducting participatory engagement with community members to assess the resilience of built, natural, and social systems and identify actions that increase resilience with an equity lens.
On this page:
- Tool Download
- What is ERB?
- Highlighted Activities in ERB
- What is Equitable Resilience?
- More About the Science
- Training & Support
- Resources for Coders
- Related Tools
Tool Download
The ERB tool can be downloaded via zip file below. For further instructions on downloading and opening the software, please refer to the ERB User Guide, also linked below. The ERB application is compatible with Windows operating systems (both desktop and laptop computers) but is not compatible with tablets or mobile devices. A Mac OS version is also available.
Downloading the application creates a file structure on your computer. All of your work in ERB will be saved in this file structure. There will not be any way for EPA to access these files or view any data you input.
Trouble downloading? View the download instructions and troubleshooting guide.
What is ERB?
The Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) is a downloadable application designed to be used by state, Tribal, territorial, county, or municipal agencies that work on environment, emergency management, public health, sustainability, land use, and climate risk management that supports communities in strengthening resilience to disasters and climate change, with a focus on equity.
It contains five sections: Plan, Engage, Assess, Strategize, and Move Forward. Each section has a series of activities that a core team carries out in conjunction with community organizations and members. The ERB is more than just a series of steps – it facilitates engagement, builds connections, and leverages creativity and local knowledge, all centered around equity principles.
ERB Highlights
The ERB contains unique resources for resilience planning that focus on inclusive engagement, participatory assessment, and resilience building actions. The activities and resources in the table below are highlights from the tool that can be used as stand-alone resources or together as part of a resilience planning process. The full set of ERB activities and resources is available in the downloadable tool.
Inclusive Engagement
The activities below offer guidance and templates for improving inclusivity of community engagement:
| Activity Sheet Link | Activity Description |
|---|---|
| Recruit a Core Team (docx) | Identify and recruit team members who are representative of your community to make decisions and coordinate the ERB project. |
| Exploring Equity Exercise (docx) | Develop a common understanding of key ERB concepts. |
| Community Engagement Plan (docx) | Develop a communication and coordination plan for the core group to use with public, private, and civic organizations and residents to accomplish ERB activities and goals. |
| Trauma Informed Engagement Guide (docx) | Learn more about how to sensitively engage with community members who may have experienced trauma from previous disasters or chronic stressors. |
| Community Connections Diagramming (docx) | Learn more about how to sensitively engage with community members who may have experienced trauma from previous disasters or chronic stressors. |
Participatory Assessment
These activities provide instructions and templates to use in conducting participatory activities with community members to assess resilience needs and climate vulnerability:
| Activity Sheet Link | Activity Description |
|---|---|
| Hazards Storytelling Activity (docx) | Share stories about experiences with disasters to build connections and provide input into hazard assessment. |
| Participatory Mapping Activity (docx) | Work together with community groups to identify neighborhood-level hazards and assets that help strengthen resilience. |
| Indicator Card Sorting Activity (docx) | Collaboratively evaluate how well local social, natural, and built environment systems support resilience. This will help pinpoint areas of concern and showcase what is working well. |
Resilience Building Actions
These activities provide instructions and templates to use in brainstorming actions and ensuring that actions to increase resilience also center equity:
| Activity Sheet Link | Activity Description |
|---|---|
| Identify Action Areas (docx) | Generate statements that describe top priority problems that are feasible to tackle in a resilience plan. |
| Vision Statement Discussion (docx) | Develop targets for what would look different if priority resilience problems were to be improved. |
| Actions Brainstorming Instructions (docx) | Develop a list of ideas for a range of actions that could be taken to achieve these targets. |
| Evaluating Equitable Resilience Building Actions (docx) | Collaboratively evaluate the list of actions based on their relative impact on equity and on resilience, and their potential for success. |
| Funding and Financing Guide (docx) | Develop a set of tactics to pursue potential sources of funding. |
What is Equitable Resilience?
Equitable resilience describes the capacity to withstand, respond, adapt, and transform in the face of climate change and disasters in ways that are culturally appropriate, participatory, and enhances the resilience of the community, not just individual resilience. Equitable resilience acknowledges deeply rooted social forces that affect how community members are made vulnerable to disaster and climate risk, may experience cascading consequences of incidents, and bear disproportionate benefits burdens of actions to increase resilience.
Key Equitable Resilience Definitions
| Term | What is it? | Why is it important? |
|---|---|---|
|
Hazard |
Any type of danger that a community might experience now or in the future. | It answers "to what" in resilience planning. To what hazards does your community need resilience? Some places may be at greater risk today from earthquakes, others from heat waves as the climate changes. |
| Social Vulnerability | The ways in which distinct populations, social groups, and communities are differentially made vulnerable to hazard, disasters and climate change. | It answers "who" in resilience planning. Who is most affected by the hazards your community faces, and who might need the most help if a disaster occurs? |
| Equity | A fair and just process that supports meaningful participation in decisions and a reasonable distribution of the benefits and burdens of taking action. | It answers "how" in resilience planning. How do we build community resilience in a fair and just way? This means listening to diverse perspectives in decision-making, focusing on the needs of those who have been made most vulnerable, and making sure the benefits and costs of resilience actions are distributed fairly. |
| Community Resilience System | Social, built, and natural environment systems at different scales affect resilience at the community level. | It answers "what" in resilience planning. What systems are already help us face current or future hazards? What do we need to do to make social, built, and natural environmental systems become more resilient? |
Learn More About the Science
Journal article: Inclusive engagement for equitable resilience: community case study insights
This article presents findings from case studies conducted in three communities in 2023 using ERB materials in resilience planning workshops. The findings were used to inform development of the ERB tool.
Journal article: Centering equity in the development of a community resilience planning resource
This article offers lessons learned for others seeking to address resilience and equity in climate risk management, particularly when working with communities in proximity to contaminated lands.
Understanding who is impacted most severely by flooding, how and why is foundational for working towards equitable resilience. This document summarizes findings from peer reviewed research on social vulnerability to flooding published between 2000 and 2020 on inequities in flood impacts, response, and recovery.
Journal article: A coupled human-natural systems framework of community resilience
This article compares and contrasts resilience frameworks to identify commonalities and gaps. It proposes use of a coupled human-natural systems framework (CHNS) to analyze community resilience to disasters.
EPA Report: Evaluating Urban Resilience to Climate Change: A Multi-Sector Approach
This report describes an assessment tool, the indicators that populate the tool, and its use by cities to explore threats to and measures of communities' resilience to climate change, allowing decision-makers to focus planning efforts on those areas that are least resilient to anticipated impacts.
Training and Support
- For comments, questions, or feedback about the ERB, email CESER@epa.gov.
- View a recorded webinar training of ERB on YouTube.
- Join the mailing list: sign up to receive ERB updates & news.
Open Office Hours
Have questions on ERB or need assistance? Click below to join one of the monthly office hour sessions via Zoom and get help from EPA researchers:
2nd Wednesday of each month, 3-4 p.m. Eastern - next session: February 12
3rd Friday of each month, 2-3 p.m. Eastern - next session: January 17
1:1 Coaching
Need more assistance? Inquire about our coaching program! Receive up to 2 hours per month of one-on-one personalized coaching on customizing ERB for your project. EPA staff will coach you on adapting the activities for your community's context and assist with brainstorm on how to build equity into your resilience planning process.
Contact us to schedule an intake call to pair you with a coach!
Download Instructions
Windows Versions:
- Click on the file version you would like above in the table to initiate a download.
- Download the zip file to your computer.
- Unzip the zip file to a new folder in a location of your choosing. This might take a few minutes.
- Open the new, unzipped folder. The default folder name will be ERB_V1.0.1.
- In the ERB_V1.0.1 folder, you will see three sub-folders (app, lib, runtime) and two standalone items (erb.exe and erb.ico). Click on erb.exe.
- It might take a few minutes to load. Once it loads, you should see the ERB landing page on your screen (see User Guide, Section 3.1) and the ERB icon on your taskbar (see User Guide, Figure 2-1).
Mac OS Version:
- Click on the file version you would like above in the table to initiate a download.
- Download the zip file to your computer.
- Unzip the zip file to a new folder in a location of your choosing. This might take a few minutes.
- Double click the file ERB.app to run on a Mac.
- Once it loads, you should see the ERB landing page on your screen (see User Guide, Section 3.1) and the ERB icon on your taskbar (see User Guide, Figure 2-1).
Troubleshoot Downloading
If there is trouble downloading and installing the tool, try the following:
- Check for institutional firewalls
- Check to see if pop-ups are blocked
- Try a different browser
- Check security settings for downloading and opening tools
- Save the zip file to the C drive instead of a shared drive (e.g., OneDrive, Sharepoint)
- Look at the logs. Navigate to the folder containing the erb.exe file. Double click into the lib directory. From there, double click into ERB directory. Then double click into the Logs directory. There will be a .log file for each of the following levels:
- Severe: Serious failure
- Warning: May be an issue
- Info: Information messages
- Fine: Tracing information for an error
- Finer: Detailed tracing information for an error.
Return to the Tool Download section.
Resources for Coders
Calling all coders - collaborate with EPA! Access the ERB code on GitHub and get involved with the open source coding effort.
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