ANCR Technical Development Advisory Workshop

The Alliance for National & Community Resilience (ANCR) held its first Technical Development Advisory Workshop on Oct. 25 at the Target Corporation headquarters in Minneapolis, Minn. The objective of the meeting was to facilitate open discussion with community resilience subject matter experts and other interested stakeholders to obtain critical feedback on ANCR’s Community Resilience Benchmark working proposal and the proposed benchmark development and implementation process.

While there are some tools that exist to help cities and communities become more resilient in specific functional areas, the priority of ANCR is to develop a benchmarking system that will support governments, businesses and communities across the country with comprehending and addressing areas of vulnerability as it pertains to their preparedness for environmental change and natural disasters across the whole community. Government officials such as former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate and Minneapolis Chief Resilience Officer Kate Knuth, private sector companies such as Dow and Target, and several community organizations had the opportunity to learn about ANCR, give feedback and offer advice and support towards the development of the benchmarking system.

The ANCR Board of Directors facilitated the workshop with Tom Phillips, principal for building regulatory strategy at Target Corporation, and Dominic Sims, chief executive officer of the International Code Council (ICC), kicking off the agenda with a warm welcome. Michael Lesnick, founder and senior partner of Meridian Institute, served as the lead facilitator for the workshop. Bryan Soukup, ICC director of resilience initiatives and government relations regional manager as well as ANCR executive director, outlined the purpose of the meeting with the participants. Major General (Ret.) Warren Edwards, ANCR board chairman and senior fellow at the Community and Regional Research Institute (CARRI), gave workshop participants a detailed background of ANCR. John Plodinec, CARRI associate director for resilience technologies, presented the framework and technical foundation for the ANCR Community Resilience Benchmark.

Following the presentations, the workshop participants were divided into three work groups to analyze and discuss various aspects of the system: the benchmarks, themselves; the development process; and public implementation. When the participants reconvened, each work group reported notes from their individual discussions and provided an array of suggestions for the ANCR team to consider for advancing the development of the benchmark system.

ANCR Executive Director Bryan Soukup was very pleased with the outcome of the workshop stating, “Over nine hours, the mission and vision of ANCR were embraced by many of the best minds in resilience in the United States. The board and ANCR participants will be working tirelessly over the next months to operationalize participant feedback and, hopefully, deliver this much-needed system to American communities in part or in total as soon as possible.”

In addition to a number of other participating organizations, the Code Council serves as a proud co-founder of ANCR and looks forward to the continued development of the ANCR Whole-Community Benchmark System to increase community resilience across the United States.

Connect to photos from the event here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/internationalcodecouncil/albums/72157665457413149