It is a way of evaluating your present ability to adapt to natural and man-made shocks that could occur in the future. It allows you and your family to determine how prepared you are to survive through the effects of Peak Oil, Climate Change, Resource Depletion, and/or Damaged Ecosystems. Some of the effects of these shocks could be: declining economic conditions, intermittent loss of hydro, gas, or water, or possible disruptions in available food supplies.

Using an Excel workbook prepared by Transition Guelph members you conduct a risk and resilience assessment of your current situation. At the conclusion of the assessment you receive a resilience score that estimates your family’s ability to adapt to a range of potential future shocks.

You can then use the results of your resilience assessment to prepare a resilience improvement plan. Upon completion of this plan you can work together with other community members to develop solutions for implementing preparedness, resilience, and sustainable improvements. In working with other community members you also develop relationships that will build resilience ties within and across the community.

Simply put, you are able to measure your family’s present level of resilience to natural and man-made shocks using the assessment. The resilience evaluation is measured across five parts: community, physical (utilities and water), shelter, transportation, and financial/economic. You can use the assessment results to identify areas needing the greatest improvement, and then develop a resilience improvement plan from this understanding. Along the way you can work together with others who are working to improve their resilience. This collaboration will build lasting ties and relationships that you may find useful if/when shocks occur.

Instead of starting with a lofty goal of achieving a sustainable household, we advocate starting at the lowest level of resilience – preparedness. Getting prepared takes little time and money, but sets the stage for achieving a higher level of resilience as shown to the left. Over a period of months to years you will continue to improve resilience until you achieve the highest level of resilience called sustainable living.

You can start by downloading the Resilience Template and An Example Resilience Assessment. For more background on Household Resilience, please see Intro to Resilience Assessment and User Guide . Next, look over these documents and decide if you would like to conduct a family resilience assessment.

If you decide to conduct the assessment, then refer to the User Guide and the automatic guidance contained throughout the assessment workbook for support. Complete both the Risk and Resilience assessments in the workbook and send the total scores for each of the five(5) assessed sections to Ken Myers at kmyers847@yahoo.com. Once the assessments are completed and scores are sent to Ken, please contact Rodrigo Goller at: engage@transitionguelph.org to sign up for the next Resilience Assessment Planning and Implementation Discussion, to be held at Guelph City Hall.

View some data collected during the first HRA workshop