First respondersResponderCQ Measures Disaster Resilience, Response Capabilities
Disaster response has dominated headlines for years, and technologies to enhance disaster response capabilities are rapidly emerging. Now, a new global dialogue is centering on resilience—how we not only come together to help communities quickly recover, and even thrive, post-disaster, but how we strengthen their defenses against future threats. DHS S&T funded the development of guidance and tools to help communities measure their “Capability Quotient (CQ),” which is the readiness to respond to risk and to respond to disruptions of any kind.
Disaster response has dominated headlines for years, and technologies to enhance disaster response capabilities are rapidly emerging. Now, a new global dialogue is centering on resilience—how we not only come together to help communities quickly recover, and even thrive, post-disaster, but how we strengthen their defenses against future threats. Every community is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to improving disaster resilience, thus it is difficult to measure and assess. However, the academic research community holds a consensus view that the ability to measure improvements based on a maturity model-based approach will help guide communities down a path that will enhance their resilience to multi-jurisdictional disasters.
S&T says thatto address this challenge, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) funded the development of guidance and tools to help communities measure their “Capability Quotient (CQ),” which is the readiness to respond to risk and to respond to disruptions of any kind.
DHS S&T and industry partner SPIN Global began working on this guidance in 2016. In that time, they published an assessment framework, developed ResponderCQ.com, and initiated a ‘global disaster resilience assessment community of practice’ in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation and Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy (DRLA).
“This evidence-based approach provides a necessary link between academic, operational and technical stakeholders, and provides a roadmap for continued research and development.” said Reggie Ferreira PhD, Director of Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy.
Today, ResponderCQ is globally available and is in use by cities, countries, businesses and non-governmental organizations.
Designed to Work Across Borders
ResponderCQ was designed to support cross-border collaboration at local, regional or multi-national levels. For example, ResponderCQ offers an online “Crisis Information Management” assessment for governments, which is a modified version of DHS S&T’s Incident Management Information Sharing Capability Maturity Model and the DHS SAFECOM Interoperability Continuum. Building on the lessons learned from S&T’s bilateral efforts, such as the Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resiliency Experiment Series (CAUSE), the assessment tool was initially piloted in conjunction with NATO’s Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. The tool enabled NATO program participants to conduct assessments of crisis information management capabilities and informed development of a country-specific and multi-national program roadmap.
