New Open-Source Emergency Preparedness Tool Can Help Communities Plan for and Mitigate Disasters

The Coastal Resilience Center (CRC), with funding from DHS’s Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), recently launched the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard (PIRS™) website to help local emergency managers align their plans across various sectors and enhance their community’s resilience against natural disasters. 

To improve planning and coordination efforts, the PIRS™ website offers a free guidebook to help stakeholders navigate the process of assessing and aligning their plans to maximize investments and reduce potential disaster impacts. The website can help determine which parts of a community are especially vulnerable to disasters. Specifically, PIRS™ is an approach that gathers numerous emergency plans and policies, as well as information on hazard zones and planning districts, then analyzes how these elements interact, down to the impacts on individual neighborhoods. The scorecard can also provide the motivation and data that local government officials and decision-makers need to better integrate their plans across multiple sectors. In addition, the website includes case studies, publications, and webinars to guide stakeholders in emergency planning and plan integration. It also offers an online course for how to use the PIRS™ scorecard.

“We need to be preparing to adapt to the changes that are coming,” said Dr. Phil Berke of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We will face drought, wildfire, mass migrations, and conflict. PIRS™ is one tool to help communities move in the direction of resilience.” Access the scorecard here or read a relevant article here.