emBRACE Concepts

The emBRACE Framework for Community Disaster Resilience is presented

Suggested citation: emBRACE (2015). An evidence-informed approach to supporting EU policy-making and international engagement in building capabilities and capacities for Community Disaster Resilience, (Policy brief 8.2), EU project emBRACE Consortium, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

The emBRACE Framework

The emBRACE framework depicts the dynamic interactions of community resilience across three component domains: resources and capacities, actions and learning.

Community resilience is influenced by outside forces, comprising context, disturbance and change over time. With its disaster risk governance focus such external context is also acknowledged to encompass laws, policies and responsibilities, which enable and support civil protection practices. These influence community capacities and actions through all phases of the disaster risk management cycle of preparedness, response, recovery, mitigation.

The framework also highlights the importance of vulnerability reduction alongside wider social protection mechanisms and services such as healthcare, housing, education and welfare provision.

The framework is a heuristic tool for policy makers and practitioners to use to understand and develop community-resilience related programmes and initiatives.