FEMA Releases National Resilience Guidance to Build the Resilient Nation Communities Need and Deserve

WASHINGTON -- Today, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced the release of FEMA’s National Resilience Guidance. The Guidance focuses on actionable principles to create a more resilient nation from identifying threats to working collaboratively towards sustainable solutions. 

“Building resilience enables communities to respond faster and recover more effectively,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. “To truly build nationwide resilience, it requires a multi-pronged approach and dedicated effort across the whole community. This new National Resilience Guidance provides critical concepts and key principles that communities can apply to strengthen resilience, setting the foundation for building more resilient communities.”

A resilient nation is created and sustained through thriving communities with secure social, economic, environmental, housing, infrastructure and institutional systems. The Guidance offers a unifying vision of resilience and the principles and steps all communities and organizations can take to increase their resilience in every sector and discipline. It explains the critical relationship between chronic community stressors and shocks. Importantly, the Guidance addresses resilience actions that are scalable for implementation by all stakeholders.

As FEMA continues to highlight 2024 as the Year of Resilience, communities will be able to use this new flexible and scalable National Resilience Guidance as a call to action for everyone from individuals to organizations to comprehensively implement resilience activities and protect themselves against future shocks and hazards, like disasters. 

The Guidance was developed through extensive stakeholder outreach and input from across federal, state, local, tribal, territorial governments, non-profit associations, emergency managers, faith organizations and community groups. The resulting guidance promotes a common understanding of resilience and addresses resilience planning and implementation across communities. 

The National Resilience Guidance is available at National Resilience Guidance.