The Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning is unique in merging the disciplines of Engineering, Social Sciences and Economics to model community resilience comprehensively. Systems that are essential for the recovery and vitality of a community - technological, financial, social and political support, healthcare delivery, education, and public administration - are being integrated in the model, creating a nexus between social and technological infrastructure that will narrow the gap between engineering and social science aspects of resilience planning and will facilitate risk communication among stakeholders and community resilience planners. The work products from the Center will provide a science-based approach to community resilience assessment and, for the first time, will support a business case for enhancing resilience at the community level.

Full validation of the system architecture in IN-CORE will be possible through extensive field studies focused on community resilience and recovery rather than simply infrastructure damage and failure studies. IN-CORE will be able to answer detailed questions on the lingering effects of natural hazards on communities; population dislocation, health and the well being of the residents, impacts across the economic spectrum as well as the fiscal impacts, thereby assessing community resilience and recovery via a suite of resilience metrics.