Household Resilience Assessment is a way to evaluate your present ability to adapt to both natural and man-made shocks that could occur in the future. A Household Resilience Assessment determines how prepared you are to survive through the effects of various issues like: natural disasters, resource depletion, and the intermittent loss of food distribution systems. Some of the effects of these shocks could be: declining economic conditions, temporary loss of hydro, gas, or fresh water, and a limited availability of high quality and wholesome food.

Using our Excel workbook, illustrated at the right, you conduct a risk and resilience assessment of your current situation. At the conclusion of the assessment you receive a resilience score that estimates your household level of preparedness to the potential shocks and disruptions mentioned above.

You can then use the results of your resilience assessment to prepare a Resilience Action Plan. Using this plan, you work together with other community members to develop solutions for implementing preparedness measures, resilience improvements, or ultimately moving to a sustainable lifestyle. While working with other resilience improvement members you develop long-term relationships that will build resilience ties within and across the community.

With the assessment you are able to measure your level of resilience to natural and man-made shocks using the assessment. Resilience in the assessment is measured in five parts: community, physical (utilities and water), shelter, transportation, and financial/economic. You can use the assessment results to identify areas needing the greatest improvement, and then develop a resilience improvement plan from this understanding. Along the way you can work together with others who are working to improve their resilience. This collaboration will build lasting ties and relationships that you may find useful if/when shocks occur.

The Resource Management Model to the left illustrates a stepwise approach to achieving a sustainable household. Using this model, start at the base where you get prepared by holding short-term stocks of food, water, and other needed items. Next, work with the members of your neighbourhood and local community to build greater awareness and resilient interconnections. Over time, as members of your household establishes new ways of living, you will develop greater resource independence until you have achieved the highest level of resource management called sustainability.

You can start by downloading the Resilience Template and An Example Resilience Assessment. For more background on Household Resilience, please see Intro to Resilience Assessment and User Guide . Next, look over these documents and decide if you would like to conduct a family resilience assessment.

If you decide to conduct the assessment, then refer to the User Guide and the automatic guidance contained throughout the assessment workbook for support. Complete both the Risk and Resilience assessments in the workbook and send the total scores for each of the five(5) assessed sections to Ken Myers at kmyers847@yahoo.com. Once the assessments are completed and scores are sent to Ken, please contact Rodrigo Goller at: engage@transitionguelph.org to sign up for the next Resilience Assessment Planning and Implementation Discussion, to be held at Guelph City Hall.

View some data collected during the first HRA workshop