Every day, we are working to promote resilience in our coastal communities. However, defining and measuring the capacity of a community to be resilient is a challenge. A recent effort by the Office for Coastal Management, working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is helping with this challenge.

As part of the President’s Climate Action Plan, a draft set of national-level community resilience indicators, is now available for public comment. The proposed indicators and measures identify key attributes of community resilience capacity aligned with capabilities such as housing, economic recovery, and natural and cultural resources. These factors may be considered by a variety of users when evaluating how to improve a community’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. The draft indicators and measures provide a consistent framework to help guide the development of useful measures, promote the identification and sharing of relevant data, and facilitate the collection of new data needed to fill critical information gaps.

This initiative has been years in the making and I would like to thank all of those who have been involved in developing this effort.

W. Russell Callender, Ph.D. 
Acting Assistant Administrator for Ocean Services and Coastal
Zone Management, National Ocean Service