Colorado Resiliency Playbook

What is the Colorado Resiliency Playbook?

All State agencies have opportunities to integrate resilience in their work to enhance services to Colorado communities and find efficiencies in funding and cross-departmental coordination. The Colorado Resiliency Playbook is a tool for State agencies to use in institutionalizing resiliency principles and practices into their operations and investments.

The playbook is designed to integrate explicit considerations of resiliency into existing government processes and decisions including policies, practices, programs, and budgets. Using this playbook, State agencies can develop strategies and actions that enhance resiliency and improve successful outcomes for all groups/sectors.

The State of Colorado defines resiliency as:

“The ability of communities to rebound, positively adapt to, or thrive amidst changing conditions or challenges—including human-caused and natural disasters—and to maintain quality of life, healthy growth, durable systems, economic vitality, and conservation of resources for present and future generations.”

The Resiliency Playbook was developed for State agencies to:

  • Build capacity for collaborative and adaptive management.

  • Leverage funding and resources to achieve multiple benefits. 

  • Identify who will benefit or be burdened by a given decision, examine potential unidentified consequences of a decision, and develop strategies to minimize risk and mitigate unintended consequences.

  • Strengthen partnerships with external stakeholders and local communities.

The playbook is organized into seven modules:

  1. Define resiliency. Determine what “resiliency” means in the context of an agency’s mission and work. 

  2. Build your team. Identify the key team members that can lead a working group to integrate resiliency into work. 

  3. Develop policies. Identify the opportunities to enhance resiliency outcomes in their work through policy tools and mechanisms. 

  4. Build a resilient project. In collaboration with the CRO and other relevant State agencies, develop a project that integrates resilience into work.

  5. Engage stakeholders. Engage stakeholders internally and in the communities to communicate about the new policies, projects, and resiliency perspective. 

  6. Overcome barriers. Identify the existing barriers to incorporating resiliency measures into agency policies, investments, and operations, and ways to overcome those barriers. 

  7. Track performance. Monitor efforts and track and report out on this work to stakeholders. Incorporate resiliency metrics into all projects. 

Colorado Resiliency Playbook

Click to download.

""

A State agency’s role in resilience:

Addressing resiliency is a responsibility shared by all State departments. Though the CRO is the State’s lead on resiliency, each department plays an important role in ensuring the State is adaptable to changing conditions. The CRO helps State agencies weave a resilience perspective into their projects, plans, and programs. Working with the Department of Transportation (CDOT), Department of Public Health and the Environment (CDPHE), Colorado Energy Office (CEO), Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (DHSEM), and other State agencies, the CRO fosters collaboration to maximize the benefits that each agency provides to Colorado communities by using resources efficiently, working towards mutual goals, and approaching projects and planning efforts holistically. 

Some recent examples of incorporating resilience into State agency policies, procedures, and plans include:

  • DOLA Energy/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund Grant Program (EIAF): DOLA has incorporated the resiliency prioritization criteria into applications for the EIAF grant program, which assists communities that are socially and/or economically impacted by the development, processing, or energy conversion of minerals and mineral fuels. The EIAF program also recently included a Renewable and Clean Energy Initiative which provided over $15 million in funding to help spark planning and implementation efforts to reach Colorado’s 100% renewable energy by 2040 goal. 

  • DOLA Watershed Resilience Pilot Program: This disaster recovery program, now completed, was focused on supporting and enhancing natural systems to better handle or recover more quickly from future rain and flooding events. Projects were prioritized by multi-jurisdictional partners and took a watershed-wide view of restoration and resilience. 

For more inspiring stories of resilience, check out the case studies.