The Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) is designed to improve community resilience through assessment, education, empowerment, teamwork, and action. It is a theory-based community intervention. CART facilitates: (1) systematic assessment of a community with respect to disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery; (2) understanding the resilience of the community; and (3) identification and implementation of actions to improve community resilience. This tool is found to be most useful in supporting advanced stages of community resilience development.

The CART Assessment Survey

Using the CART Assessment Survey a community profile is developed and the survey can document changes in participant perceptions over time, after an adversity or intervention. The survey consists of core community resilience items, demographic items and items specific to each community and its issues.

The CART Intervention

The CART has four domains:

• Connection and Caring
• Resources
• Transformative Potential
• Disaster Management To build individual coping skills and enhance individual and community resilience the CART Intervention uses community-focused activities. It is grounded in solution-focused, narrative, cognitive-behavioral, empowerment, and positive youth development theories. The CART process includes that participants identify community events or issues, share their own experiences, and create a community narrative. Following the principles of agile management and teamwork, CART focuses on relationships and social networks. It uses a difference reduction approach which enables community members to formulate and complete actions which promote community resilience. This process provides opportunities and motivation for prosocial involvement; enhances interpersonal relationships; teaches and encourages teamwork and collaboration; promotes individual and group initiative and agency; enhances communication skills, social-emotional skills, coping, and resilience; facilitates connection to networks and systems of care; introduces terminology and principles of disaster mental health; and teaches critical reflection and problem solving to confront personal and social challenges.

The CART Set of Tools

Communities can use the set of tools that CART is made up of (questionnaires, tables, etc.) to enhance community resilience through self-assessment, group planning processes, and action steps. Specific assessment tools enable agents and citizens to collect, analyze, and interpret local data. These tools include:

• The CART Assessment Survey—a field-tested instrument to assess community resilience across the four CART domains.
• Key Informant Interviews—a way of collecting qualitative information from knowledgeable community members.
• The Data Collection Framework—used to identify the type and sources of existing data that can serve as indicators of resilience.
• Community Conversations—these facilitated dialogues can be used to foster information exchange across community sectors.
• Neighborhood Infrastructure Maps—can help community members become more aware of their neighborhoods' physical infrastructure and resources.
• Community Ecological Maps—a visual way of understanding the prevalence and strength of social networks and relationships within a community; can be used as a starting point to improve relationships and partnerships.
• Stakeholder Analysis—this tool helps assess key individuals, groups, and organizations who have a stake in your activities.
• SWOT Analysis—stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats/vulnerabilities. It is a self-assessment tool to identify community resources and capabilities.
• Capacity and Vulnerability Assessment—this tool can be especially helpful in communities where certain people or groups may be impacted differently depending on characteristics like health, socio-economic status, or ethnicity.

Level of Trust

The level of trust in the entity that proposes the initiative needs to be high. This is because the level of trust will influence the willingness for adaptation.

Cultural Conditions

Important for implementation is that the targeted communities are able to act together. Cultural beliefs can influence the predisposition to collaborate.

Risk Awareness

The effectiveness of the solution is shown through the implementation of identified actions and increased resilience. High risk awareness will support the adaptation of identified measures.

Threat perception

The effectiveness of the solution is shown through the implementation of identified actions and increased resilience. High threat perception will support the adaptation of identified measures.

Perception of responsibility

Increased perception of responsibility will facilitate the successful implementation of identified actions.

Sense of preparedness

An awareness of how prepared a community is for potential threats will support the adoption of needed actions.

CASE 1

The H2020 project Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience (Driver+) made an extensive application of the tool with a detailed analysis of its performances and its effectiveness (measured in terms of its ability to improve community resilience). The tool was applied in eight end-user community groups in rural and urban areas of Scotland. The feedback from the communities regarding the workshops was significantly positive; community members recognised the CART tools used in the meeting to be very effective with a score of “Good/Very Good” from 97% of those surveyed regarding “workshop content”. The “workshop overall” survey question scored Good/Very Good by 97% of participants. In both cases, 3% of participants rated the workshops as “Fair”. No participants rated the workshops as “Poor”. In the “one month after” surveys; there was evidence of behavioural changes; for instance, community participants raising resilience issues from the workshops at subsequent community council meetings and practical changes implemented within the communities The application and the conclusions are in a dedicated report named D934.16 – COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TOOL - SP93 - SOLUTIONS published in 2017 and available at the address: https://www.driver-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DRIVERPLUS_D934.16_Community-engagement-tool-1.pdf

CASE 2

In this case study the authors explored the main influencing factors on community resilience and the magnitude of their impact throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond with an empirical study based on the use of CART in communities in Shanghai, Wuhan and Chengdu. The study collected 650 valid questionnaires. Data collection was conducted from February to March 2020 when these three cities activated a Level One public health emergency response. The data were analyzed by using multiple linear regression analysis and structural equation model. There was no evaluation work done in connection to the solution but rather a collection and analysis of information regarding the resilience of the different communities. Regarding the Resilience of the communities and the factors influencing it the authors concluded that:

• Domains such as Information and Communication, and Connection and Caring scored higher, while Disaster Management, Resources and Transformative Potential scored lower;
• A community got higher resilience sores if the epidemic was prevented and controlled more effectively, people within the community participated more actively in disaster risk reduction activities and activities of volunteer responder groups, and people were more closely connected with the community; However, there is a significant negative relationship between the education level and the community resilience scores; Variables such as the participation in affiliated volunteer responder groups, and community disaster risk reduction activities exerted the biggest impact on community resilience.

CASE 3

This case study concerns an application of the Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) Assessment Survey in a community of 5 poverty neighborhoods. located in a southern United States metropolitan area that serves as a regional commercial and cultural center. There was no evaluation work done in connection to the solution but rather a collection and analysis of information regarding resilience. Survey results suggest various dimensions of community resilience (as represented by core CART community resilience items and CART domains) and potential predictors. Correlates included

• homeownership,
• engagement with local entities/activities,
• prior experience with a personal emergency or crisis while living in the neighborhood,
• involvement with a community organization that focuses on building safe and caring communities through personal relationships. The application and the conclusions are available at the address: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21665044.2016.1189068

CASE 1

One of the challenges reported by the DRiver+ project in using the participatory methodology of CART is the “negative discovery” risk whereby the participants may look to over-exaggerate their problems as they may feel that if they do, they will be more likely to gain assistance to tackle their problems. This leads to disempowerment and feelings that their community is worse off than it really is. Our results show that communities felt more empowered through our awareness session. More details are available in the reference: https://www.driver-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DRIVERPLUS_D934.16_Community-engagement-tool-1.pdf

CASE 2

No challenges are described. However this application concerns only a minor part of CART (assessment of resilience with the application of a questionnaire).

CASE 3

No challenges are described. However this application concerns only a minor part of CART (assessment of resilience with the application of a questionnaire and related interviews and analysis).