Resilience Indicators Tool

Introduction

In support of Second Nature’s Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitments, particularly the new focus on resilience, Second Nature and CB&I have embarked on a pilot project designed to accelerate a key piece of the Resilience Planning and Implementation Framework.

Together, we will work with several higher education institutions in two pilot cities: Chicago and Boston. Our goal is to co-develop a tool designed to help institutions assess resilience indicators and understand overlap with the community, as well as identify joint leverage opportunities.

CB&I and Second Nature will work with key city officials (e.g., Chief Resilience Officers), to understand the way these two leading cities are benchmarking resilience in their communities. They will then draft a document, highlighting some early indicators used by the cities and some likely indicators that may be in use on campuses, and identify the alignment between the two. Participating signatories will provide input and feedback on these example indicators. Edits and feedback will be incorporated and development of a tool will begin. Schools and cities will be asked to review the tool and to test its helpfulness in identifying resilience indicators, especially those that cut across campus-city boundaries.

Partners

• CB&I – provides government and commercial customers with comprehensive energy, sustainability, and resiliency services to survive, adapt, and thrive in the face of environmental, social and economic stresses.
• City of Boston – Green Ribbon Commission Higher Education Working Group, Department of Environment, Chief Resilience Officer
• City of Chicago – Alliance To Retrofit Chicago Higher Ed (ARCH)
• Participating Signatories
  • Emerson College
  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Tufts University
  • University of Illinois – Chicago
  • University of Massachusetts – Boston

Goals

This project represents an opportunity for participants to accelerate their own resilience planning, but also to be in a leadership role as the network begins to adopt this tool and these approaches. By the end of the project, we hope schools will be able to know more about:

• How to start framing resilience in context of campus and community
• The degree of alignment on resilience goals that exists between campus and community
• How to better identify and use indicators of resilience
• The biggest opportunities for leverage of community capacity and vice versa

Deliverables

Second Nature will publish and promote a simple spreadsheet-based tool and supporting documentation to assist campuses beginning the process of their resilience assessment and selecting indicators of resilience. The tool will contain examples of indicators deemed most useful by the campus and city partners and will help a campus understand how specific aspects of resilience might be measured differently by a community vs. a campus.

This pilot project will run from April to September 2016.