Community Resilience
SPW served as a convening member of the Community Resilience System Initiative (CRSI), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a nation-wide, public-private partnership to advance community resilient practices.
Community Resilience is the capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change. Resilience requires proactive mitigation and planning that includes the full fabric of the community.
SPW believes that a community’s resilience is measured by its sustained ability to prepare for, respond to, and fully bounce back from a variety of crises.
Resilient communities minimize any disaster’s disruption to everyday life and their local economies. Resilient communities are not only prepared to help prevent or minimize the loss or damage to life, property, and the environment, but they also have the ability to quickly return citizens to work, reopen businesses, and restore other essential services needed for a full and timely economic recovery.
Our approach to resilience is based on a simple economic rationale: communities have a quantifiable level of functional capacity. In a crisis situation, that capacity declines at a rate and to a depth that is largely dependent upon the nature of the disruption, the community’s level of preparedness, and the rapidity and effectiveness of the response. More importantly, the recovery rate depends on those same factors.
SPW partners with SPW Community Strategies to unlock the potential for economic growth and revitalization strategies for neighborhoods, cities and metropolitan regions. Our economic revitalization and community planning services include:
Developing community-based plans that engage residents and stakeholders to produce positive physical change and shared prosperity, and to contribute to a healthy environment and population.
Creating economic revitalization strategies for cities and regions that balance growth, equity, and sustainability.
Forming public-private partnerships around capacity building and community engagement in minority, low-income and marginalized communities.
SPW has over 15 years experience in large scale project management, community engagement and public awareness campaigns for local and federal government. SPW has managed public engagement projects throughout the southeast region, including Shelby County voting machines roll-out; Shelby County faith-based ReadySunday disaster preparedness project; Shelby County Master Resilience Plan; MS Gulf Coast Resilience Capacity Building; four Disparities Studies, and Market Feasibility & Sustainability studies.
