The report argues that the U.K. will become a more resilient nation by increasing citizen and community involvement:

We live in a brittle society. Over 80 per cent of Britons live in urban areas relying on dense networks of public and private sector organisations to provide them with essential services. But our everyday lives and the national infrastructure work in a fragile union, vulnerable to even the smallest disturbances in the network. And both are part of a global ecosystem that is damaged and unpredictable. How does Britain protect against these risks? Much of our infrastructure is outmoded and archaic. And with their narrow focus on emergency services and institutions, so are the policies that underpin it.

This pamphlet calls for a radical rethink of resilience. Instead of structures or centralised services, it argues that citizens and communities are the true source of resilience for our society. Using numerous case studies it highlights what policy makers can learn from people’s resourcefulness and points to new tools that can transform our ability to respond when disaster strikes. Resilience is an everyday, community activity. It is people’s potential to learn, adapt and work together that powers it. Only by realising this potential will we succeed in building a resilient nation.

The report recommends the government adopt an approach to community resilience based on the “4 Es – Engage, Educate, Empower and Encourage”: 

Engagement
Engagement strategies are based on dialogue and feedback. Central government, local authorities, emergency planning officers and the emergency services can no longer simply communicate with individuals and communities; they need to engage with them. Engagement must go beyond the ‘fire alarm’ approach of handing out specific information to communities and instead involve listening to individual and community concerns, and focus on helping to shape and influence their decisions…

Education
…Education is crucial to ensuring that people build individual resilience. However, educating individuals and communities about resilience must be embedded into their everyday lives and must connect with them, whether in the classroom, at work or shopping. The balance is to ensure the
approach is subtle, connected to current activities (rather than standalone efforts) and reflects the context and demographics in each location…

Empowerment
The emergency planning bureaucracy and the focus on the response and recovery phases are a central plank in UK resilience but a balance needs to be made that allows communities to feel empowered to act. As the flood wardens in Walcott demonstrated in November 2007, communities have the relevant experience and skills to be resilient. They must be empowered to act and given the tools and resources to do this. Training and public exercises are one approach – examples in this pamphlet and elsewhere demonstrate the valuable role they play…

Encouragement
Finally, formal and informal institutions and organisations need to encourage individuals and communities to play a role. This encouragement can take many forms but ultimately it is about realising the potential communities have and taking time to support and influence their actions. There will never be a single template for this activity and every initiative and idea will be different across the country…

And the report concludes:

How should central government, local authorities and emergency services realise the potential to become a resilient nation? The scale and nature of the exercise in front of them looks vast. But as this pamphlet has argued, it need not seem so. The UK is covered with multiple dense networks of volunteers,
community and faith groups, clubs, societies and voluntary organisations, and small, medium and large businesses. Include governance networks that contain parish councillors, ward councillors, local authorities, regional government structures and central government departments and agencies based in Whitehall and beyond, and you immediately see the potential across the country. The difficulty for individuals within this system is where
to start. It is precisely because of the complexity of all these networks that we tend to opt for blanket approaches, which include community risks to individuals, families and communities. But increasing the number and complexity of these networks demands a new approach, which is both surgical in its initial attempts and then helps influence the message across other networks of actors.

Community resilience may be best managed through existing neighbourhood watch schemes; in other areas of the country schools and education initiatives may present a more obvious route. In rural areas farm networks can be employed by local authorities, while in major cities supermarkets may offer an innovative way of nudging individuals to become more resilient. There can be no one-size-fits-all approach to community resilience. What works in Birmingham may make no sense in Bristol, while initiatives that work in Northumberland may fail to take root in Newbury – community resilience activities will always have to be developed from the bottom up.

The full “Resilient Nation” report can be downloaded here.

“designed to increase awareness of the kinds of risks the UK faces, and encourage individuals and organisations to think about their own preparedness. The register also includes details of what the Government and emergency services are doing to prepare for emergencies….The publication of information on these risks, previously held confidentially within government, is intended to encourage public debate on security.” 

According to the Risk Register’s analysis, pandemic flu is the biggest threat to Britons over the next five years. While the British government believes a pandemic is not as likely as some other threats (such as terrorism), its potential impact is seen to be much wider, possibly infecting up to half of the UK’s population. (The report also provides an accompanying graph displaying the relationship between each threat’s impact and likelihood.)

But to me, more important than the actual content of the Risk Register is the fact the British government is releasing it and letting the public in on the range of threats (as well as the uncertainties about them) that the U.K. faces. I strongly believe that the U.S. government should consider doing the same. If governments want their citizens to take these threats seriously — whether it be pandemic or terrorism or any risk mentioned in the report — then they have to be willing to explain what they are and why they warrant attention and preparation. Though the British population has been more sensitized to domestic threats — because of their experience with the Irish Republican Army (as well as the ‘Blitz’ of World War II) — there is no reason why the U.S. public should not be able to handle the same information. 

The British government says that the release of the Register is just the beginning of a new effort to communicate these threats to the public. And my favorite part is that the citizenry is actually being asked to participate in the process. The front page of the web site announces: ”Please send any comments to us on what you did not and did find useful in the document and we will consider them when the document is next updated.” The plan is to release a new Register annually. The national report also complements work that being done in local communities on risk assessment to reflect some regional differences in threats, particularly natural.

Though I think the Register is a hugely positive step for citizen preparedness, I do, however, have one quibble — it is not firm enough in instructing the public what to do with all this information they are being given. The introduction says: “The National Risk Register is for those who may [my italics] want to improve their own preparedness.” You’re telling people about how potentially dangerous (and real) these threats could be (ie. half the country infected by a pandemic) and then you say that citizens “may” want to prepare. To me, the approach needs to be “you should” or “you must” or maybe it is “a responsibility of citizenship” to do so. In fact, I would argue that giving the public more information means they have more responsibility to be part of the nation’s emergency preparation. I believe that we need to move ultimately to what I like to call a “do tell, do ask” citizen preparedness policy — with more information told to and more responsibility asked of the public.