Use of Resilience Hubs in an Emergency
What is a Community Resiliency Hub?
To fully understand what a Resilience Hub is, it is important to learn what “resilience” means. Resilience means having the ability to survive and/or bounce back from an extreme event. Similarly, Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities, which if designed well, can fairly enhance a community’s resilience and at the same time reduce GHG emissions, which will essentially improve a community’s quality of life. These hubs are led by community members and community-based organizations rather than local governments, to enhance and build capacity within a community and revitalize the resources lost in a disaster with the help of neighboring communities.
Rural communities already have limited capitals (natural, physical, human, etc.), which is why, when an unforeseen event occurs, these communities are negatively affected by it and have a higher price to pay. However, for them to achieve a community mobilization, it is very important to have a balance between all the six capitals, as mentioned in Framing Sustainable Cities & Communities. A resilience hub is a mixture of all these capitals in just one facility or a building that provides an opportunity to develop local community power and leadership.
Key Components:
These resilience hubs help fulfill basic needs (food, water, shelter) during or after a disaster and can be a useful everyday space for health clinics and food. It could be a place where people can for emergency necessities, power, and protection during an emergency. To make any resilience hub successful, there are five key components that a community needs to consider.
Since the entire community will be using it, it is important that there is a desire and support from the community members. Community engagement in the co-development of the hub can be considered effective because then members will understand the resources and services it can potentially provide during a disruption. Secondly, a physical place (building) is needed that is in good condition, can support solar, and have enough storage/space to help the community when needed. During a disruption, when people are going to come together in this space, it is important that this hub has access to resources like freshwater, electricity, refrigeration, and other supplies needed in a state of emergency. Moreover, when we think about an emergency, we can consider that there can be power outage as well. This is why it is also very important for the hub to have a cost-effective onsite energy system for the people to survive. Lastly, such resilience hubs are more like community centers but an enhanced version of it. Community uses it for big gatherings and other events they conduct.
It is understandable that not every community might be able to come up with a resilience hub of their own. Which is why the leadership of the community needs partners. These could include private partners which can provide much-needed capacity and support in making and operating these hubs.
Under an emergency:
The year 2020 has been full of surprises. First, there was Australia under a massive wildfire and now the entire world is facing a pandemic. Globally, we all experienced the effects of either the disruptions in the supply chain of basic resources or lack of health-related facilities during this time or even the fast spreading of the virus. It could all have been avoided if communities/cities have their own resilience hubs. Not just one, but multiple, depending on the size of the community. These hubs could have acted as community-based testing sites, because of which people who were tested positive could have just stayed in the community and not spread it further.
When there was a lack of basic resources, these hubs could have acted as neighborhood distribution centers for the whole community because as mentioned above they have enough storage to feed the entire community under an emergency. It could have been much safer for the members to access these centers rather than the big retailers. These buildings can also provide freshwater and meals to young children and elders who are at high risk from the virus. Moreover, to reduce stress and anxiety in such times, with the help of internet and electricity, the community can initiate virtual platforms to either work, study and learn new skills, or even just to stay connected to your friends.
COVID-19 was just an example of a massive disruption, communities/cities face disruptions on a regular basis like extreme weather, water level rising, and other man-made disasters. I believe that “if we had Resilience Hubs in underserved communities, we could have this more coordinated approach” (Baja, 2020). Moreover, it is important to build a community’s capacity by taking such approaches rather than depending on third parties. This is how we build resilience.