The Resilience Building Circle (RBC)

Based on ARCH and SHELTER’s step by step approach to resilience, a resilience building process was designed to show how resilience can be built in a system and to provide an innovative, comprehensive toolbox that can be adapted to local needs. Building resilience is an iterative process, that can be depicted as a circle and should be run through continuously. Each run through the circle supports the resilience building process in the system under consideration and eventually higher levels of resilience can be reached. In addition, the process is flexible, allowing stakeholders to pick and choose specific circle segments when needed, without the obligation to repeat the full circle.

The first step Setting the ground prepares for the process of resilience building by first determining the wanted objectives of the resilience strategy and then creating an overview of the context of the system aiming to build resilience. This includes identifying the right stakeholders, resources and projects in the cultural landscape that could be of importance. The second step, Assessing the system, aims to understand the local setting and the current state of resilience. This is done by collecting and organizing data and knowledge about the system. The third step is Identifying solutions and supports in creating a local resilience strategy incorporating measures that are applicable to the local context. The next steps are Implementing this strategy and its measures and Monitoring the progress of the measures to assess if the objectives are being met. Resilience knowledge is the center of the resilience building circle, as background knowledge is needed during each step of the circle. Under each step you can find guiding questions that lead you through the different aspects of this step. Each question will suggest some tools, developed in the RescueME project, that can support with answering the question.