Resilience Hub Planning and Design Compendium 2025
Published in 2025, the Resilience Hub Planning and Design Compendium provides a comprehensive guide to assist local governments and interested community groups in establishing resilience hubs. The Compendium explains why resilience hubs are necessary, what resilience hubs are, and how to create a resilience hub. These points are then illustrated by an assortment of case studies showing successful resilience hub projects and the benefits they are bringing to their communities.
The Compendium recognizes that communities are facing increasing threats from natural disasters, necessitating easier access to resources, community services, disaster resilience information, communication, and planning. The authors stress the importance of taking social considerations into account, such as equitable access to community resources, employment services, and community-building efforts, in addition to disaster resilience measures.
Resilience hubs can address multiple environmental and social equity challenges by:
- Providing refuge during extreme weather events, facilitating recovery efforts post-event, and assisting with outreach and resilience-building in times of calm;
- Reducing emissions and pollution;
- Providing education and resource access;
- Offering training and workforce development programs;
- Providing safe gathering spaces for environmental justice communities; and
- Supporting community infrastructure and networks.
To be most effective, a resilience hub needs must be informed by the community’s needs and available resources. A resilience hub needs: “services and programming, [a] building, landscap[ing], communications, power, [and] operations and maintenance.” Services and programming includes healthcare, childcare, senior programming, food pantry distribution, and workforce training. Buildings should have passive resilience, or “a building’s ability to maintain critical conditions in the event of extended loss of power, heating/cooling or water.” Additionally, buildings should include air filtration and HVAC systems for cooling, insulation, a commercial kitchen, drinking water, bathrooms, seating and signage, and environmentally friendly upgrades, such as high roof albedo (solar reflectance) and rainwater harvesting. Landscaping should follow this trend of efficient and environmentally friendly elements, such as an urban garden, shade trees, albedo, permeable paving, water reuse systems, and flooding mitigation infrastructure. Communication capabilities of a resilience hub should include free Wifi and charging stations, emergency radios, walkie talkies, and training for community members on emergency response. This would be difficult without a reliable power source, which should include backup battery power, solar panels, and energy efficient upgrades. Lastly, operations and maintenance must ensure there is adequate personnel to operate the facility, security, and regular maintenance so that the resilience hub may reliably function.
To create a resilience hub, the Compendium outlines six crucial steps:
- Establish partners and goals;
- Evaluate vulnerabilities;
- Identify the site;
- Decide on hub components;
- Secure funding and implementation; and
- Plan operations and management.
The plan underscores the importance of involving the community throughout this process for a strong resilience hub and network.
The Compendium was developed by a coalition of climate adaptation groups, including Climate Resilience Consulting, One Architecture, Farr Associates, and Rebuild by Design, with assistance from the Resilience Hub Collaborative.
Publication Date: 2025
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Related Organizations:
- Rebuild by Design
- One Architecture & Urbanism (One)
- Farr Associates Architecture and Urban Design
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Resource Types:
- Planning guides
