Resilience Hubs
Building a Community Framework for Human Survival
Community Hierarchy of Needs: A Community-focused framework to Build Trust, Reliability, and Resilience Hubs
Resilience
People, animals, and nature are experiencing the devastating results of climate change globally:
Winters grow colder and summers hotter.
Fires burn hotter, rain floods neighborhoods.
Melting glaciers accelerate sea-level rise and ocean temperature creep up.
The thawing tundra is releasing long-trapped CO2.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, other natural disasters, and war are displacing countless individuals and families, in desperate need of food, water, and shelter...of stability and safety.
The economic impact of our destabilizing climate threatens the survival of our increasingly vulnerable communities.
To counter this, we cannot rely on national-level governments—these wheels move too slowly and don’t always roll in the same direction. Instead, we must look to communities themselves to:
Build long-term resilience by empowering local leaders in their communities to prioritize challenges, brainstorm solutions based on effective, trustworthy information, and identify funding sources.
Inspire the determination to make change happen.
Early and frequent community engagement is critical and includes outreach, workshops, and other interactions that embody cultural sensitivity and respect.
Empowering community leaders and residents to take ownership of their future involves providing better access to tools, education, and opportunities to thrive. Healthy communities also require healthy environments, including clean air, water, diverse animal species, and even beneficial bacteria. Environmental stewardship is a priority if communities are to slow climate change and mitigate its impact.
WeAccel’s Role
At WeAccel, we believe the path forward is to empower communities to lead in identifying and addressing their priorities—whether it’s ensuring access to food or preparing for floods—by building the local solutions they need to thrive in both everyday life and emergencies.
And we aren’t alone in this work. WeAccel brings together the expertise of local and global partners to co-create resilience plans designed by and for the people who live and work in the community.
New technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet-of-Things system metrics, and other tools available through a digital public infrastructure (DPI) can be valuable tools to support community priorities. However, the health of people and the planet must come first, with local communities guiding the ethical use of problem-solving technology.
WeAccel provides community engagement expertise that can empower communities to identify, connect, and manage the myriad variables, processes, and entities that create a healthy community ecosystem. Using our Community Hierarchy of Needs framework as the starting point for problem, budget and priority assessment, WeAccel’s holistic approach ensures that any community can be enabled to consider and prioritize solutions to climate change challenges.
What We Do
WeAccel’s Community Hierarchy of Needs framework helps communities assess needs, budgets, and priorities holistically, ensuring they can effectively anticipate and address climate change impacts. Potential services from WeAccel and its partner organizations include:
Asset Mapping: People, Environment, Government, Business, Anchor Institutions, etc.
Engaging the “Assets”: “What keeps you up at night?”; identify early adopters/potential leaders.
Stakeholder Education: Help communities "connect the dots" for smarter decision-making by identifying current, emergency preparedness, and long-term recovery needs.
Community Hierarchy of Needs: Assist communities identify and prioritize climate change challenges through collaborative processes.
Resilience Hub Network: Identify community potential to create a Resilience Hub Network and the steps needed to build a sustainable network.
Identify appropriate technology and potential funding resources: From physical to digital public infrastructure, appropriate technologies may provide an effective roadmap for climate plan implementation.
What Is a Resilience Hub?
As defined by the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities augmented to:
1) Support residents; and
2) Coordinate resource distribution and services before, during, or after a natural hazard event.
Our work with resilience hubs has taught us the critical importance of integrating communication, energy and transportation systems for effective community resilience. We can help communities create reliable, connected services that meet diverse needs—before, during, and after a disaster.
We develop and nurture collaborations among local leaders, organizations, and residents to create resilience strategies that reflect each community’s priorities. From immediate needs like food access to longer-term climate challenges, we guide communities in assessing resources and fostering trust for effective, collaborative solutions.
Our approach leverages advanced tools like digital twins and Beckn Protocol-based marketplaces to model how these systems interact and identify opportunities for better decision-making. WeAccel does this by bringing together the collective wisdom of experts, innovators, and change-makers to ensure our approach is both impactful and inclusive.
Recognizing that resilience requires ongoing investment, we help secure funding through public-private partnerships, local grants, and national programs. This ensures communities have the financial support to sustain and grow their resilience resources over time.
“ The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently reported that between 1980 and 2024, there were 66 tropic cyclones, 203 severe storms, 23 wildfires, 24 winter storms, 44 floods, 31 droughts and 9 freeze-disaster events in the United States that each resulted in economic losses of $1 billion [exceeding ($400 billion+)], as measured in today’s dollars. ”
