---
title: how to build resilience for a place
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-build-resilience-for-a-place
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/how-to-build-resilience-for-a-place.md
subtitle: "six steps a town, a district or a watershed group can take, starting with the living systems it already stands on"
category: how-to
---

# how to build resilience for a place

*six steps a town, a district or a watershed group can take, starting with the living systems it already stands on*

**How to build community resilience: start with the living systems the place stands on.** Name the shocks and the slow stresses. List what the place depends on and who depends on it. Find the floodplains, marshes, forests and soils that carry part of that load, read their condition, keep what works before you rebuild, and fund their keeping every year.

Before any flood map, the floodplain spread the flood, the marsh took the edge off the surge, and the forest above the intake held the slope and the snow. They do that work whether or not anyone pays for it. [**Ensurance**](/manual/ensurance?from=guide) is a way for the people who depend on them to pay for their keeping. It is not the floodplain, and it does not stop a storm.

Here, resilience means the capacity of a place to take a shock and come through it. This is the natural-systems pass of a resilience plan, not the whole plan: warning, evacuation and shelter are the emergency manager's lane, public health has its own, and [a town is people who share a place](/guide/a-town-is-people-who-share-a-place?from=guide) covers the ties between neighbors.

A small town can start steps 1 to 3 itself in a month, with its plans and a phone. Steps 4 and 6 need help: a hydrologist or ecologist, the conservation district, a university extension office, the state floodplain office. The named tools are American; elsewhere, use your national disaster-loss record, your river basin or catchment authority, and the UNDRR city scorecard.

## start from the frameworks that exist

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) *Community Resilience Planning Guide* is a planning process in six steps: "Form a Collaborative Planning Team," "Understand the Situation," "Determine Goals and Objectives," "Plan Development," "Plan Preparation, Review, and Approval," and "Plan Implementation and Maintenance." In its 2017 city scorecard, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) lists Ten Essentials; Essential 05 is "Safeguard natural buffers to enhance the protective functions offered by natural ecosystems." Arup and the Rockefeller Foundation's City Resilience Index counts "conservation of environmental assets" in one of its 12 goals.

Natural buffers are one essential of ten, one goal of twelve. This post starts there, inside a NIST process: steps 1 to 4 feed "Understand the Situation," and steps 5 and 6 feed the plan and its implementation. For a region, see [how to build a regional resilience plan](/guide/regional-resilience-plans?from=guide).

## step 1: name the shocks and the slow stresses

Shocks are floods, fires, heat waves; slow stresses creep: a falling water table, sediment filling a reservoir, a canopy thinning street by street.

Use the place's own record first: the hazard mitigation plan, past disaster declarations, flood insurance claims, stream gauges, residents' memory. Tulsa's record turns on its 1984 Memorial Day flood, which killed 14, according to the city.

For a US place, [the place page](/place?from=guide) first asks which place is most special to you and why, and saves your answer as a place on our map. It then shows that census tract's expected annual loss in FEMA's National Risk Index, "the average economic loss in dollars resulting from natural hazards each year," deaths and injuries included, and the peril behind most of it. It is a national model, a starting line, not a survey.

## step 2: list what the place depends on, and who depends on it

Trace each thing the place cannot go a week without (water, the road out, power, cooling) to its source, and write who else leans on it. [How to map what your property depends on](/guide/how-to-map-what-your-property-depends-on?from=guide) walks the method, and [every account has two lists](/guide/every-account-has-two-lists?from=guide) explains why the second list matters.

## step 3: find the living buffers and who keeps them

Mark which sources are alive: the floodplain, the marsh, the dune, the forest above the intake, the street trees, the farm soil.

Then find who owns and keeps each one: parcel and easement records, the conservation district, the land trust, the parks department. Many buffers sit outside your boundary; [no place is resilient alone](/guide/no-place-is-resilient-alone?from=guide) takes that up.

Where tribal land or water is upstream, downstream or beside the place, the tribal nation is a government with its own authority, knowledge and plans, not a name on the owners list. Contact it early, government to government, as an ask rather than a notice, and accept "no" or "not now." Where a tribe or a local group already keeps the ground, ask how to support that work, not how to enlist it.

## step 4: read their condition and their distance to the edge

A map shows a marsh is there, not whether it works. Distance to the edge is how much more it can take before it becomes something else ([bounce back to what?](/guide/bounce-back-to-what?from=guide); [what makes a living system resilient](/guide/what-makes-a-living-system-resilient?from=guide) says what to look for).

| living buffer | extent tells you | condition to read |
|---|---|---|
| Floodplain | Acres mapped in the flood zone | Whether it still reaches the river, or is cut off by fill or a levee |
| Coastal marsh | Acres on the map | Its elevation against the sea, and room to move inland |
| Forested watershed | Acres of forest | Fuel loads, dead trees, slopes after the last fire |
| Urban canopy | Percent cover | Whether it shades the hottest blocks |

Edges are hard to see ahead of time. Do the work anyway. Watch the slow variables, and keep slack: never plan on a buffer at its limit. The Stockholm Resilience Centre's example: phosphorus can build up in lake sediment for years with no effect, until a threshold is passed and the lake turns. In an experiment on a living system, recovery from small disturbances slowed near a tipping point; the authors suggest such slowing may be used to rank systems "from resilient to fragile," not to predict when a shift comes (Veraart et al., 2012). Start from water quality and gauge records, forest health surveys and canopy maps, read with an ecologist.

## step 5: do the work in order: keep, repair, rebuild last

Keep what already works, and protect it first. Repair what is slipping: reconnect the side channel, pull the invasives, thin the overgrown stand. Rebuild last, where something has already flipped. Add gray works where living systems cannot carry the load: a marsh does not stop every surge, and a hospital needs a known capacity on day one.

Keeping a floodplain can mean getting out of its way. At Nijmegen, in the Netherlands' Room for the River program, the dike was moved 350 meters inland to open a side channel. Tulsa cleared nearly 1,000 buildings from flood-prone areas over three decades (WGBH, 2017), through voluntary buyouts and green space that doubles as stormwater detention (FEMA).

## step 6: fund the keeping, by the ones who depend on it

A living buffer needs keeping every year, and grants arrive once.

One local way to carry a yearly line is a vote. In March 1998 Napa County voters passed Measure A, a half-cent sales tax "to provide ongoing local funding" for the Napa River flood project, which includes restoring wetlands and building floodplain and marsh terraces. The sources report no measured damage reduction, so it is an example of a funding line, not proof of results.

Federal money is unsettled. FEMA said in April 2025 it was ending its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program; a judge ruled that unlawful in December 2025, and FEMA then opened one $1 billion round for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, set to close July 23, 2026 (Congressional Research Service, June 30, 2026). Check its status first.

The yearly share should come from those who depend on the ground: see [split the bill for what lowers it](/guide/split-the-bill-for-what-lowers-it?from=guide) and [how a city runs its own resilience marketplace](/guide/how-a-city-runs-its-own-resilience-marketplace?from=guide).

:::johnson
**you do not build resilience once. you keep it.** Living systems work every year, and so must their keeping.

[browse named ground →](/specific?from=guide)
:::

## a first month

| when | who to call | what to gather |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | The floodplain manager and the emergency manager | Flood maps, claims history, the hazard mitigation plan |
| Week 1 | The tribal government, where tribal land or water is upstream, downstream or beside the place | A first ask, government to government: how it wants to be approached, what it already keeps, and who speaks for it. Let it set the pace |
| Week 2 | The water utility | The source area map; what storms and fires have cost at the intake |
| Week 2 | The conservation district or land trust | Parcels, easements, restoration projects, monitoring data |
| Week 3 | The insurer or the public risk pool | Loss history by peril |
| Week 3 | Residents, at a public meeting | What people remember of past floods and fires, and who was hit hardest |
| Week 4 | Everyone above, in one room | One page: shocks, dependencies, buffers, keepers, what goes unfunded |

## what this cannot do

No plan stops a record event. In Hurricane Sandy in 2012, wetlands avoided an estimated $625 million in direct flood damage across the northeastern US. That was a little over 1% of Sandy's flood damage, and wetlands raised flood heights in 20% of the region while lowering them in 80% (Narayan et al., 2017). Living and gray work together because each has limits.

The hard part is budgets, land rights and who decides: the ground that protects a town is often someone else's, or under another government's authority. "One person's resilience may be another's vulnerability," writes the disaster scholar David Alexander, so ask who gains and who carries the cost. Where people already keep the ground, support their work; do not write over it.

## where ensurance fits

**Ensurance** gives a place an account that holds funds for its keeping. The account is not title, and it does not settle whose ground a place is. Named ground inside it can carry a certificate that records who funded its keeping, and proceeds go to the people doing the keeping, on a public record. Browse named places in [specific ensurance](/specific?from=guide); if your place has no account yet, ask the people who keep the ground first, then [suggest it](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=risk-resilience.ensurance&from=guide).

## next steps

[Name the place that matters to you](/place?from=guide) and, for a US location, see its expected annual loss. In local or tribal government, [see how ensurance works for governments](/solutions/governments?from=guide&topic=resilience). For help with regional resilience planning or watershed and hydrology work after the six steps, [talk to us](/contact?from=guide&topic=resilience).

## frequently asked questions

### how do you build community resilience?

Start from the living systems the place stands on, read their condition, keep and repair before you rebuild, and fund the keeping.

### what is a resilience plan?

In our plain summary, echoing the National Research Council's 2012 definition of resilience: a community's written strategy to prepare for, absorb, recover from and adapt to adverse events, with owners and a schedule. A good one names the living systems the place relies on.

### are nature-based solutions enough on their own?

A 2019 World Bank and World Resources Institute report says that in many circumstances combining "green infrastructure" with gray "can enhance system performance, boost resilience, lower costs, and better protect communities." The same report cautions that green infrastructure "must be as rigorously evaluated and carefully designed as gray projects."

## sources

[NIST, Community Resilience Planning Guide](https://www.nist.gov/community-resilience/planning-guide) — The six planning steps, quoted as the guide names them

[UNISDR/UNDRR, Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities: Preliminary Level Assessment, May 2017](https://preparecenter.org/wp-content/sites/default/files/unisdr_disaster_resilience_scorecard_for_cities_preliminary.pdf) — The Ten Essentials as of the 2017 scorecard; Essential 05 on natural buffers

[Arup and the Rockefeller Foundation, City Resilience Index](https://mercociudades.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CRI-total-Booklet.pdf) — Four dimensions, 12 goals and 52 indicators; conservation of environmental assets under goal 7

[FEMA, National Risk Index Primer, November 2020](https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-11/fema_national-risk-index_primer.pdf) — The definition and method of expected annual loss, including fatalities and injuries valued in dollars. FEMA now serves the index through its Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool

[City of Tulsa, Flooding History](https://cityoftulsa.org/government/departments/water-and-sewer/flood-control/flooding-history/) — The 1984 Memorial Day flood and its 14 deaths

[WGBH, How Tulsa became a model for preventing floods, November 20, 2017](https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017-11-20/how-tulsa-became-a-model-for-preventing-floods) — Nearly 1,000 buildings cleared from flood-prone areas over three decades

[FEMA, Teamwork approach to outreach and engagement reduces flood risk](https://fema.gov/ht/node/631725) — Voluntary buyouts and green space that doubles as stormwater detention in Tulsa

[Stockholm Resilience Centre, Applying resilience thinking, February 19, 2015](https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2015-02-19-applying-resilience-thinking.html) — Phosphorus in lake sediment as a slow variable that can turn a lake past a threshold

[Veraart, A. J. et al. (2012), "Recovery rates reflect distance to a tipping point in a living system," *Nature* 481: 357–359](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10723) — In an experiment, recovery slowed near a tipping point; such slowing "may be used to" rank systems, not to time a shift

[Rijkswaterstaat, Room for the River](https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/en/projects/iconic-structures/room-for-the-river) — The program: built at 34 locations from 2006 to early 2019 for €2.3 billion

[European Climate-ADAPT, Room for the River Waal: protecting the city of Nijmegen](https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/metadata/case-studies/room-for-the-river-waal-2013-protecting-the-city-of-nijmegen) — The dike at Nijmegen moved 350 m inland to open a side channel

[Naturally Resilient Communities, The Napa River Basin, California](https://nrcsolutions.org/the-napa-river-basin-california/) — Measure A, March 1998: a half-cent sales tax for ongoing local funding, and what the project built

[Congressional Research Service, FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC): Recent Developments, IN12609, updated June 30, 2026](https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/PDF/IN12609/IN12609.10.pdf) — The April 2025 announcement, the December 2025 ruling, and the combined FY2024–FY2025 notice set to close July 23, 2026

[Narayan, S. et al. (2017), "The Value of Coastal Wetlands for Flood Damage Reduction in the Northeastern USA," *Scientific Reports* 7: 9463](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09269-z) — An estimated $625 million avoided in Sandy, a little over 1% of its flood damage; flood heights raised in 20% of the region and lowered in 80%

[Alexander, D. E. (2013), "Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological journey," *Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences* 13: 2707–2716](https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/13/2707/2013/nhess-13-2707-2013.pdf) — "One person's resilience may be another's vulnerability"

[National Research Council (2012), *Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative*, chapter 1](https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/13457/chapter/3) — Resilience as "the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events"

[Browder, G. et al. (2019), Integrating Green and Gray, World Bank and World Resources Institute](https://www.wri.org/research/integrating-green-and-gray-creating-next-generation-infrastructure) — Green and gray combined "in many circumstances", and the caution that green infrastructure be as rigorously evaluated as gray

## the series

1. [resilience means to leap back](/guide/resilience-means-to-leap-back?from=guide) — **Read first:** The word's root, its travels, and the question that changed in 1973
2. [bounce back to what?](/guide/bounce-back-to-what?from=guide) — A beam returns to its shape; a lake or a reef pushed too far becomes something else
3. [what makes a living system resilient](/guide/what-makes-a-living-system-resilient?from=guide) — Many kinds doing one job, spare capacity, connection and the slow things nobody watches
4. [the resilience a place already has is alive](/guide/the-resilience-a-place-already-has-is-alive?from=guide) — The floodplain, the marsh, the canopy and the soil as infrastructure
5. [how to build resilience for a place](/guide/how-to-build-resilience-for-a-place?from=guide) — Six steps, starting with the living systems a place already stands on
6. [no place is resilient alone](/guide/no-place-is-resilient-alone?from=guide) — Why the unit that works is the region, and every place in it