In the words of a UN agency which hosts substantial meetings among the Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative? (EMI), ProVention Consortium?, UNDP?, UN-HABITAT?, and the UN Inter-Agency Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction/UN/ISDR?:

"Faced with the reality of enormous social, economic and environmental changes, and their resulting increased risks and vulnerability, how can a city be truly sustainable if it lacks the capacity to reduce vulnerability to crisis and to respond creatively to change? This essential capacity can be described as local resilience. Therefore, a new agenda must be introduced in the sustainable cities movement: a sustainable city must be a resilient city.

While professionals in the risk and disaster management community have developed efficient tools to prevent and manage crises, thousands of cities worldwide have developed skills in participatory planning? with their citizens, community groups and other stakeholders. There is much to be gained by bringing the experiences of these two communities together. Through its Resilient Communities & Cities Initiative, ICLEI seeks to mainstream disaster risk prevention? and build resilience into existing municipal management? instruments and routines."
- ICLEI Resilient Communities and Cities initiative - a UN agency.

In Canada during 2004-5 the Civic Efficiency Group brought resilient community principles to the attention of the federal government, notably Infrastructure Canada - see item 2 and the finance ministry. It also made some attempts to refine the municipal role in emergency response and (via the 6C declaration) relationships that later affected ICLEI projects.

While hurricane Katrina "itself was unavoidable, much of the injury, death and long-term devastation may have been prevented with improved risk assessment, surveillance, communication and response coordination. Moreover, current recovery efforts are being severely impeded by the same dearth of effective communication, coordination, and focus on mission critical gaps between need and service delivery." from a report on the DKMS system.

Consequences of Katrina included US FEMA? and its parent agency? US Homeland Security? being called into question for their competence and effectiveness. This more than any other event helped bring local resilience into focus. The Bring Back New Orleans Fund for instance has focused wholly on that approach.

The entire approach of disaster relief? has been wrong. It is obviously ineffective and totally wrong when considering a pandemic or climate change, and has proven also ineffective after wars. Since these are the dominant risks of this century, there is no sense whatsoever in building any disaster-specific systems whatsoever. What the community can do is what will be done, during these large scale disasters, and what it can't do, won't be done. There is no sense at all in investing any effort at all in disaster-specific knowledge, training or systems. Redirecting it to more resilient routine systems is the only valid approach.

There will always be circumstances where disaster relief? will be required. Even if it were much more cost-effective? to spend all resources in preparing and none whatsoever in response, public outrage? at watching a human catastrophe unfold will always require a democracy to devote some effort to relief, even if it's only symbolic.

It won't work, people are too stupid and reliant on outside experts. They are also too conflicted to deal fairly with situations too close to home, objective outside experts can more easily make life and death decisions like triage or allocations of food.