The Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard (PIRS)™ is a tool to help communities address the challenges of natural disasters, resilience, and planning. PIRS™ guides communities by helping them to understand and discuss inconsistencies across their networks of plans by spatially evaluating their plan documents and existing vulnerabilities. PIRS™ helps you spatially evaluate networks of plans to reduce hazard vulnerability and protect the economic, social, and environmental well-being of your community. The PIRS™ method guides communities through the process of assessing and aligning their plans to maximize investments and reduce potential disaster impacts.

Related products include:

• Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard Hub Website
• Plan Integration for Resilience step-by-step Guidebook
• Professional training to practitioners provided through the American Planning Association

PIRS^™ has generated engagements with multiple communities including Rockville, TX and Norfolk, VA, who were early adopters of this resilience planning methodology. Further translation has occurred through the PIRS™ training curriculum developed and delivered by the American Planning Association (APA), a professional organization with 40,000 members and chapters in every state.  Certified planners have continuing education requirements that can be satisfied by APA courses.  Additionally, the PIs have an active partnership with FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Community Rating System to further the incorporation of PIRS™ into planning processes and the implementation of policies and actions that assist local governments, no matter what natural hazard challenge(s) they face.

Research Participants & Partners

Siyu Yu (Texas A&M University), Philip Berke, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Jaimie Hicks Masterson (Texas A&M University), Dr. Matthew Malecha (Texas A&M University) and Joe DeAngelis (American Planning Association)