New project on Recovery

On May 3, 2016 a wildfire ripped through Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada as 88,000 people fled for their lives. This was Canada’s costliest insured event and while many people are back in their homes or have moved away from the community, the rebuild continues more than 4 years later.  Every area of the globe is vulnerable to disasters and communities can face dramatic social and humanitarian consequences as well as economic losses and dislocation. Currently, we are all facing the impacts of a global pandemic crisis and wondering what recovery from this crisis will look like. 

This new project will provide a framework for how to assess the impacts of a crisis on communities, and address these by developing short-term recovery actions and designing ambitious renewal initiatives. In terms of what needs to be recovered and renewed, this document will focus on the people who have been affected by the crisis, the places where the impact and response has happened, and the processes that have been configured to meet the needs of the response. Key to addressing the people, places and processes is the need to establish the right partnerships to support recovery and acknowledge the emerging power relations to ensure that meaningful recovery and renewal can happen.

Professor Duncan Shaw (United Kingdom), convenor of Working Group 5 on Community Resilience is the project leader for the development of ISO 22393. He explains the need for such a guidance,

“Civic leaders and organizations need to prepare to think about recovery strategies from early on in the crisis to understand its major effects on the community. What short- and longer-term recovery aims to establish is a new way of life that, in some ways, might resemble life before the crisis but that is also adapted to, and conditioned by, the crisis that has passed - building on lessons learned through the crisis”

The Project Team is currently developing the working draft of the standard. The project has been selected by ISO to participate in the trial of the new online standards authoring editor to create the working draft. This new tool allows standards developers to efficiently create and revise documents collaboratively. For more information on the launch of this new platform see.  

How can you get involved? 

If you are interested in participating in this new project, please contact your national member body to apply to be nominated as a working group expert. As recovery impacts a wide range of technical and societal areas, the project team is also looking for liaison members from other ISO committees or international associations.