The Recovery Planning Toolbox

What is the purpose of the toolbox?

The toolbox is designed to support communities in planning for recovery before a disaster occurs. While it is also useful and valuable in post-disaster contexts, its primary intent is to enable proactive pre-disaster planning. Pre-disaster use is emphasized as it allows for greater visioning and alignment of recovery efforts with a community’s values, priorities, and long-term goals.

The purpose of the toolbox is to:

• Encourage proactive thinking and partnerships to enable communities to be ready and organized, so they can act quickly during recovery.
• Provide a planning framework on developing a pre-disaster recovery plan, adapting the plan following a disaster, and ways to involve partners and the community in the creation of recovery policies and plans.
• Offer practical tools and resources (e.g., templates, checklists, guides, examples, and case studies) to support communities in recovery.

What is included in the toolbox?

Each community comes to the recovery planning process from a different starting point, with unique capacities, characteristics, and priorities. With this in mind, the toolbox is organized into different sections designed to support communities at any stage in the planning process.