ResponderCQ Measures Disaster Resilience, Response Capabilities

“ResponderCQ is applicable across a range of S&T priorities, from our multinational efforts with NATO NICS to our flood programs in South Carolina,” explained S&T Program Manager Ronald Langhelm. “This tool helps provide a realistic assessment of whether efforts to improve resilience are in fact doing so. This is a tremendous help for communities that must decide how to assign resources, whether it is to continue in their current improvement efforts or to try a new approach to enhance resilience.”

Designed for Cities
In a 100 Resilient Cities survey, the top need identified was a request for assistance with implementing and measuring disaster resilience. DHS S&T and SPIN Global collaborated with the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program to develop and test a service delivery model that rapidly measure various components of a city’s existing resilience strategies.

Mike Mendonca, Chief Resilience Officer for Wellington, New Zealand, shared that his city used ResponderCQ to “better understand where our strengths are with respect to geographic information systems (GIS) and resilience information management, and more importantly where our weaknesses are and where we have gaps.” Knowing what is not working is as essential to improving overall resilience as knowing what does work well.

The District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) used ResponderCQ to provide a business continuity assessment and facilitate outreach.

“HSEMA, DHS S&T and SPIN Global hosted a workshop for local small and medium sized businesses. The workshop used the ResponderCQ tool, which is a quick and easy way for business owners to assess their ability to respond to and recover from business disruptions,” said Adam Baron, Private Sector Liaison for HSEMA. “The workshop also let business owners discuss their concerns, share best practices and walk away from the workshop feeling more prepared.”

In addition, many businesses in cities throughout the Mid-Atlantic region conducted a “Crisis Information Management” assessment based on S&T’s model during FEMA’s 2018 National Level Exercise.

Modernizing Paper-Based Approach
The ResponderCQ platform is mobile-ready and powered by a statistical database and analytics engine that is capable of supporting conversion of paper-based assessments into an online experience. ResponderCQ assigns the user or group of users a quantitative score along with recommended actions to improve resilience. Scores improve when recommended actions are implemented and reported.

Using the ResponderCQ platform enables users to navigate a simple four-step process and allows assessment providers to more efficiently and effectively manage the assessment lifecycle. The process is designed to truncate typical paper-based assessment processes that may take weeks to complete and assess into an experience that can be completed in just minutes, yielding both tangible products and defensible results.

The user experience is as follows:

·  select and complete a self-assessment;

·  immediately review and download a report with analysis and next steps;

·  access downloadable resources from the online toolkit; and

·  schedule or initiate a re-assessment.

The assessment provider may offer an assessment to specified organizations and groups, and can produce group reports, conduct trend analysis, and obtain other insights that will help inform program management.

Tangible and Defensible Outcomes
S&T says that ResponderCQ is intended to provide a baseline assessment of a community’s resilience and then monitor progress over the course of 2-5 years. With the aid of ResponderCQ, communities are better able to jointly plan, coordinate and manage response to risk and to incidents as they arise. By having better information available as they plan, communities that mitigate their risk will experience reduced costs for both response and recovery while enhancing their resilience and will be able to use progress reports to substantiate funding needs and portray outcomes.
Ronald Langhelm noted, “This tool changes the way communities used to plan for and respond to risks. Now, ResponderCQ guides their decisions on how to improve resilience efforts.”