The Dark Side of Mother Nature
1. Collect and stockpile essential supplies (bottled water, cash, food and a first-aid kit are among the 25 recommended items suggested).
2. Create a portable supply kit - comprising the most essential items.
3. Develop and practice an emergency plan.
These chime with some of the recommendations of the UK Cabinet Office's recently published National Risk Register (NRR) - in particular those on having an 'emergency pack', a 'core stock of essential supplies' and the importance of developing plans to cope with emergency situations (see in particular Chapters 3 and 4 of the NRR for the main recommendations).
However, as I suggested in a recent post on the NRR, while such advice is clearly an important part of any approach to resilience, it often overlooks something altogether more fundamental - that is, building self-resiliency from the ground up. Rather than informing and advising, I'm referring to the process of actually engaging with communities and citizens, providing the conditions that will encourage them to become more independently resilient.
Instead of simply telling people that they need to put together an emergency kit, the aim instead should be to make them reach this conclusion themselves and act proactively on their own initiative. This is something that we're currently exploring in greater depth, so watch this space.
Michael Harvey
michael.harvey@demos.co.uk