Why Not Focus on Community Continuity and Continuous Resilience?

By Stephen Jordan

I had an interesting conversation today with a senior corporate executive. As we wrapped up, she said something that made me realize we really need to clarify that the Institute for Sustainable Development is trying to break through with new concepts that the current frame of talking about community shocks and stresses doesn't take into account:

“It’s a shame you focus so much on disasters.”

At ISD, we actually don’t.

Our mission is grounded in the opposite idea: communities shouldn’t have to endure a disaster to get the resources, attention, or leadership they need to become stronger.

What we focus on is community continuity—reducing the harm from future disruptions and strengthening resilience every single day.

Businesses already understand this. They don’t build “Business Emergency Plans.”They build Business Continuity Plans because interruptions cost money, customers, and competitiveness. Continuity is practical. It’s strategic. It’s how organizations stay viable.

Communities deserve the same logic.

Moving Away From Focusing on Responding to Sudden Shocks to Addressing the Stresses Beneath Them

Too often, we treat disasters as isolated events—wildfires, floods, hurricanes, pandemics—when in reality they are sudden shocks that expose deeper, ongoing stresses:

• aging infrastructure

• brittle housing systems

• fragile local economies

• limited access to capital

• social and health vulnerabilities

• governance bottlenecks

• outdated rules and planning assumptions

At ISD, we don’t just look at the dramatic moment of impact.We look at what the shock reveals.We look at the conditions that made the disaster as destructive as it was.

And then we ask the real question:

Why aren’t we working on reducing those stresses continuously?

The Kid Soccer Problem: Chasing the Ball Instead of Covering the Field

Every time a disaster strikes, there's a tendency for the press and community leaders to act like how little kids play soccer —everyone bunches up and chases the ball.

Massive surges of funding and attention flood toward the most recent disaster site, while every other community risk is ignored. Disaster recovery has ballooned into a $90–$150 billion-a-year industry, yet very little of that money reduces the chronic conditions that made the community vulnerable in the first place.

We treat each disaster like a bespoke “project”—a man-to-man defense—when the risk landscape requires a zone defense:covering the entire field of risk, continuously, so fewer disasters become catastrophes.

This Isn’t Just FEMA. The Whole System Needs Modernization.

Our public systems were built for episodic emergencies, not continuous resilience. If we want to shift from reaction to continuity, reforms must be broader:

• HUD, especially CDBG-DR, where funds often take years to reach communities

• Treasury and CDFIs, which need tools for resilience capital—not just post-disaster financing

• EDA, to focus on economic continuity and workforce resilience

• Infrastructure authorities, which must design for future conditions

• Insurance markets, which are destabilizing under rising climate volatility

• State-level recovery structures, still heavily oriented toward post-disaster processes

FEMA performs its mission well. Emergency managers are the heroes of the system. But they are the last line of defense. The real problem is upstream: we only invest seriously after the damage has already occurred.

A Regional, Zone-Defense Model for Resilience

Instead of building custom recovery processes for each new disaster, ISD advocates for strengthening continuity at the regional and structural levels:

• the Southeast, where heat, flooding, and hurricanes converge

• the Southwest, facing water scarcity, extreme heat, and wildfire

• the West Coast, managing seismic risk, climate volatility, and housing fragility

• the Midwest, grappling with aging infrastructure and manufacturing transitions

Each region has predictable stress patterns—meaning predictable opportunities to strengthen continuity before the next shock hits. Zone defense means:

• reducing harm continuously,

• addressing root causes of vulnerability,

• and building systems that remain functional even during disruption.

Why ISD Is Different—and Why We Created the ISD Academy

This is also why ISD is fundamentally different from most sustainable development, climate, and disaster-response organizations. To break through, we have to change mindsets. We have to help leaders understand the full dimensions of community management—the same way businesses consider both upside opportunity and downside risk. A company that only chases the latest opportunities without managing its risks isn’t truly sustainable; neither is a community.

One of our biggest challenges as a country is that people have been conditioned for decades to see these issues only through an emergency-management lens. So we're like the tennis player with the over-developed right arm compared to the rest of his body - we're great at saving lives, not so good at preventing the economic damages or displacement that takes place. 2025 has been relatively peaceful, but just last year 11 million people were displaced from their homes.

However when community leaders adopt ISD’s continuity-centered approach, the dividends are enormous: stronger economic performance, more reliable public systems, reduced long-term costs, and far greater stability when disruption comes. The current system simply doesn’t deliver those benefits because it wasn’t designed for continuous resilience.

This is also why we created the ISD Academy—to train leaders, practitioners, and partners in the skills and frameworks needed for continuous resilience management. The Academy helps communities shift from reactive disaster cycles to long-term continuity thinking, and it builds the talent pipeline required to support resilience year-round.

Staying in Position

Disaster response will always matter. Emergency managers will always be essential.

But the country cannot prosper by chasing the ball every time it moves.We need a system that stays in position—covering the entire field of risk, strengthening communities every day, and ensuring that when disruption comes, it is survivable, manageable, and brief.

That’s the future ISD is working to build.