technical BRIEF
www.epa.gov/research
Community Environmental Resiliency
Index (CERI) Workshop I
Vision: EPA, federal, tribal, state & local
partners develop indicators & indices as
analytical & planning tools to help
communities protect public health & the
environment by identifying ways to
strengthen their resilience to natural &
human-made disasters.
Goal: Share expertise and work underway to
identify EPA's assets, research needs, &
opportunities to develop relevant, actionable,
& useful indicators & indices.
EPA PURSUES INTEREST IN DEVELOPING COMMUNITY
ENVIRONMENTAL RESILIENCE INDICATORS AND INDICES
Introduction
Environmental resilience includes minimizing environmental
hazards and public health risks from disasters, facilitating
restoration of critical environmental services following a
disaster, and building back in a way that mitigates future
adverse impacts. Because local social networks, civic
organizations, and municipal services play key roles, we
approach environmental resilience at the community scale.
Community resiliency supports long-term sustainability.
Community environmental resilience indicators and indices
can help communities conduct self-assessments, develop
corrective actions, and measure progress towards attaining
their environmental resilience goals.
EPA's Homeland Security Research Program (HSRP) is
working with national experts to develop community environmental resilience indicators and indices to
identify public health and environmental vulnerabilities and assess ways to mitigate future disaster risks.
EPA held an internal workshop May 6-7, 2014, to pursue interest in developing such indicators and indices.
Its aim was to identify assets, interests, and needs. The workshop was held concurrently in Cincinnati,
Research Triangle Park, Washington, B.C., and via webinar. It was attended by EPA staff from the Office of
Research and Development, Programs, and Regions. The results of that workshop are presented in this brief.
Why Community Environmental Resilience Indicators?
Community environmental resilience involves protecting public health and the environment by reducing
vulnerabilities to disasters and developing the capacity to minimize health and environmental risks. By doing
so, communities increase their potential to recover quickly from disasters, including homeland security
incidents, and sustain resources they depend on for well-being. As climate change amplifies the risks of
extreme weather events, community environmental resilience becomes a key component of climate change
adaptation. The National Research Council (NRC) report Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative
recognizes the need for improved ways to measure community resilience to disasters (NRC 2012).
Researchers have proposed socioeconomic, demographic, and health indicators of community resilience, but
there is no established, scientifically vetted and validated set of indicators. Also, none of these efforts has
focused on community environmental resilience indicators. EPA's HSRP is addressing this gap.
EPA's HSRP primarily addresses two key areas: water and wastewater infrastructure protection, and
community cleanup and recovery. EPA researchers and program managers have produced tools and
technologies that communities can use to enhance their environmental resilience. EPA has also developed
science-based, environmental and sustainability indicators in its Report on the Environment (EPA 2014).
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HSRP researchers are seeking ways to leverage this science to develop resiliency indicators. This work
builds on efforts already underway across the federal government. It can feed into EPA resilience initiatives
and support interagency efforts under Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)-8, PPD-21, the national climate
action plan, and national response and disaster recovery frameworks. Community environmental resilience
indicators can be incorporated into a self-assessment checklist or full-scale index. Decision-makers from the
public, private, and civic sectors could use these to identify areas of concern and allocate resources to
strengthen resilience to natural disasters, technological accidents, and homeland security incidents.
What is Community Environmental Resilience?
Workshop participants defined community environmental resilience as minimizing environmental risks
associated with disasters, quickly restoring critical environmental and ecological services after a disaster, and
applying this learning process to reduce vulnerabilities and risks to future incidents. It includes reducing
vulnerability to disasters, that is, minimizing exposure and sensitivity to disasters. It also includes increasing
the capacity of environmental systems to return after an incident and building back in ways that mitigate
future impacts. Community environmental resilience indicators and indices can help communities gauge their
capacity to withstand disruption and reduce disaster impacts. Indicators of resilience might include the
capacity of a wastewater treatment plant to process storm flow, the capacity of wetlands to provide natural
flood protection, and knowledge of the environmental contaminants communities might be exposed to as the
result of a disaster. Restoring estuaries and wetlands, proactively managing debris and waste, and addressing
interdependencies between water and energy systems are all steps that communities can take to strengthen
their environmental resilience.
Workshop Outcome: Environmental Resilience Science & Tools
Workshop participants proposed establishing a scientific basis for investigating environmental resilience by
adapting a coupled human-natural systems model. They discussed how characteristics of resilient
infrastructure such as redundancy, robustness, and connectivity apply to environmental systems. Participants
examined how the index development process laid out by Yale's Environmental Performance Index might be
adapted to create a resilience index. They advocated building on
existing EPA resilience tools developed for homeland security,
climate change adaptation and disaster recovery (Table 1). They
recommended adapting EPA environmental and climate change
... ... _ ^VT^T - Resource abundance and quality
resilience indicators tor a CERI.
Sustainability is the capacity for:
• Human health and well-being
• Economic vitality and prosperity
Resilience is the capacity to:
• Overcome unexpected problems
• Adapt to change
Prepare for and survive catastrophe
EPA scientists posit that resilience to disasters is necessary for
long term sustainability, and are investigating the relationship
between resilience and sustainability. EPA's Database of
Sustainability Indicators and Indices (DOSII) provides a tool for
considering how sustainability and resilience indicators are interrelated.
Workshop participants also identified an emerging need for research that addresses environmental justice
and resilience. Communities with economically disadvantaged or marginalized populations located in
proximity to environmental hazards could be disproportionately affected by disasters. For example, disasters
generate large volumes of waste and debris. Regional coordination is required to support communities'
capacity to manage this waste, and that debris disposal does not affect already overburdened populations.
Fully considering a disaster's environmental life cycle, that is, the environmental consequences of
preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery, is necessary when assessing resilience.
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Table 1. EPA Resilience Tools Discussed at CERI Workshop
Resilience Tool
Climate Resilience Evaluation and
Awareness Tool (CREAT)1
CANARY & TEVA-SPOT2
Community-Based Water
Resiliency Tool (CBWR)1
Emergency Water Supply planning
guidance1
Flood Resilience: A Basic Guide for
Water & Wastewater Utilities1
Water Security Toolkit2
Water Resiliency Action Planner
Kit1
Water/Wastewater Agency
Response Networks (WARN)1
My Environment1
I-WASTE4
Waste Estimation Support tool
(WEST)1
Municipal Solid Waste Decision
Support Tool (MSW-DST)3
Integrated Climate & Land Use
Scenarios1
Environmental Justice (EJ) View1
Purpose
Water utilities explore climate change impacts & adaptation strategies
Detection & early warning for contaminants & service disruption in
drinking water distribution systems
Water utilities gauge current preparedness efforts. Community
awareness of including water sector in emergency planning.
Guidance on how to plan for disruptions in drinking water services
Understand flooding threats, identify vulnerable assets, evaluate
mitigation options
Evaluate & design rapid responses to water contamination incidents
Convene meetings with key players in water utility planning to
discuss roles & responsibilities during water service interruptions
Intra-state network of utilities that share local water sector resources
during disasters or service disruptions
Integrate community environmental & health data into maps; "Shout
out" reports on local environmental efforts
Estimate types of debris, select appropriate waste management after a
disaster
Estimate waste from a wide-area radiological incident as a function of
selected decontamination approaches
Solid waste planners evaluate environmental aspects & cost of
integrated waste management strategies
Estimate housing density, population, impervious surfaces for climate
scenarios
Create online maps to view factors affecting community
environmental health
Available via search on www.epa.sov 2https://software.sandia.sov//trac 3https://mswdst.rti.org/
4http://www2.ersweb.com/bdrtool/losin.asp. Tools may require permission to access and training to use.
Workshop Outcome: Developing INDICATORS for an INDEX
After reviewing currently available resilience tools, workshop participants compiled a preliminary list of
qualitative and quantitative environmental resilience indicators (Table 2). Participants also agreed that
indicators should be compelling to community stakeholders, easily measured, and lead to action. Since
resilience involves interactions across complex social, economic, and environmental systems, these
indicators cover social and environmental trends and conditions. For example, environmental, economic, and
demographic data together may highlight the challenges of handling wastes produced by a disaster.
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Table 2. Community Environmental Resilience Indicators Proposed at the Workshop
Water resilience
Practiced emergency response plans
Active watershed association
Access to emergency water supplies
Ratio of municipal debt to revenue
Presence of mutual aid agreements with neighboring
communities
Contamination warning systems in place
Waste resilience
Household recycling rates
Percent population below poverty line
Available landfill capacity
Number of Superfund sites per square mile
Scenarios conducted with stakeholders to pre-plan waste &
debris management
Familiarity with debris disposal options
Workshop participants identified several potential purposes and audiences for developing community
environmental resilience indicators and indices:
• Communities conduct self-assessments to benchmark current conditions, capabilities and needs.
• Communities take corrective action based on indicators and track improvements.
• Researchers identify thresholds where environmental and ecological systems gain or lose resilience.
• Federal program managers identify funding opportunities and measure policy outcomes.
• Audiences include federal, state, and local agencies, and stakeholders such as urban planners,
businesses, and others involved in disaster planning, mitigation, response, and recovery.
Achieving community environmental resilience will require long-term planning and implementation. EPA's
CERI project team aims to develop environmental indicators and contribute the best available science and
research that can support community environmental resiliency. Its next step is to host a second workshop in
July, 2014 to refine indicators and the purpose and scope of an index.
References
EPA. 2014. Report on the Environment. Public Review Draft, http://cfpub.epa.gov/roe/ (Last accessed
3/25/15).
NRC. 2012. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
For More Information
Visit: EPA NHSRC website (www2.epa.gov/homeland-security-research)
Contact: Brendan Doyle (202) 564-4584, doyle.brendanigiepa.gov
Keely Maxwell (202) 564-5266, maxwell.keely@epa.gov
If you have difficulty accessing this PDF document, please contact Kathy Nickel (Nickel.Kathyigiepa.gov) or
Amelia McCall (McCall.Ameliaigiepa.gov) for assistance.
U.S. EPA's Homeland Security Research Program (HSRP) develops products based on scientific
research and technology evaluations. Our products and expertise are widely used in preventing,
preparing for, and recovering from public health and environmental emergencies that arise from
terrorist attacks or natural disasters. Our research and products address biological, radiological, or
chemical contaminants that could affect indoor areas, outdoor areas, or water infrastructure. HSRP
provides these products, technical assistance, and expertise to support EPA's roles and
responsibilities under the National Response Framework, statutory requirements, and Homeland
Security Presidential Directives.
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