Developing a Community Emergency Hub capability 

In this blog, Dr Andrew McClelland and Professor Duncan Shaw discuss developing a community hub emergency capability.

How can UK local resilience partnerships enable more locally appropriate community responses to a disruption?

Aerial view of homes in a suburban setting in England

Experience indicates that when a disruption occurs, society will respond. Communities have many of the skills and resources needed to solve local problems and help each other. Indeed, in a wide-area or prolonged disruption, the support to communities from emergency responders may be delayed or overwhelmed. So, communities are often “the first and last responders” to local disruptions. 

Taking the Resilience Beyond Observed Capabilities (RBOC+) project scenario of a catastrophic attack on digital and energy networks in the year 2050 as an end point, what needs to be done now to  support the response to that attack. To help society to surge, local resilience partnerships can encourage the formation of Community Emergency Hubs as one mechanism that channels society’s generosity in ways that are safer, better, and faster.  

Working with UK and international practitioners, the National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+] (NCSR+) with support from RBOC+ has co-produced a Community Emergency Hub module that includes a suite of resources that describe how to create that capability. This blog introduces and gives an overview of Community Emergency Hubs, what they are, and when they may be helpful.   

You can access these resources and other supporting material, including a 10-minute video explainer, at the NCSR+ webpage

Volunteers diligently sort aid and necessities for refugees and homeless people at charity hub

What is a Community Emergency Hub?  

 A Community Emergency Hub is a place for a community to coordinate its own efforts to help each other during and after a disruption. It is run by the community, for the community so it is formed – spontaneously or with encouragement from emergency responders – and operated by local people who turn up. Community Emergency Hubs are a way for local people to work together to solve local problems, while still co-ordinating with the local council and emergency services over big problems.  

For example, a Community Emergency Hub can be a mechanism for volunteers to identify local needs created by a disruption and decide how to safely solve local problems using what is available. With the level of local connectedness that a Community Emergency Hub can have, it will also generate relevant local information to provide to the official Emergency Coordination Centre to help prioritise activities and ensure that those areas with the greatest needs are supported in a timely fashion. Two-way information sharing in this way can help the Community Emergency Hub to be a central information point for the community to find official information and advice. 

A Community Emergency Hub is not reliant on a physical building so, if the place where it starts becomes unsuitable or is needed by others, it can move to a different location. Also, if help is needed that the community cannot provide themselves, then local government and emergency services may be able to help by securing additional support from another community or from other sources. 

Objectives and principles of a Community Emergency Hub 

Community Emergency Hubs are formed with the following objectives in mind: 

  • Provide information and advice to the community (e.g., from the Emergency Coordination Centre); 
  • Focus the community response on using what is available to give the most help; 
  • Match peoples’ needs with offers of help; 
  • Provide a safe and supportive gathering place (e.g., a safe shelter, cool/warm hub, or rally-point for the community during a loss of utilities like electricity and gas); 
  • Connect the community with the local council and emergency services. 

Community Emergency Hubs are underpinned by the following principles: 

  • Owned and run by communities for local people to solve local problems; 
  • Can be run from a local meeting place (e.g., community building with basic facilities, accessibility, public liability) or temporary structure (e.g., gazebo in a carpark);  
  • Connects communities with emergency responders for two-way information sharing; 
  • Is a community effort so all are responsible to keep children, vulnerable adults and each other safe, and must raise safety and safeguarding concerns immediately;   
  • Does not give a volunteer special legal powers or authority; 
  • Does not ask a volunteer to put themselves or others at risk so a common-sense approach to safe working practices is required. 

Community Emergency Hub roles

A person carries supplies through a waterlogged street in a flooded neighborhood, depicting the immediate response and relief efforts amidst the devastation, featuring submerged homes and cars

To enable them to work as intended, the NCSR+ guide for communities to establish their own Community Emergency Hub details five core volunteer roles including:  

  • Hub Coordinator role which arranges the hub’s effort to meet the objectives. The role is to coordinate the team, consider volunteer welfare, and helps other coordinators to identify and meet community needs. 
  • Information role is to collect and display information from various sources including from the community and the Emergency Coordination Centre. This information can be shared with the community to help prioritise needs.  
  • Communications role is to communicate important information within the hub and to external audiences (e.g., the public). This role coordinates with the Emergency Coordination Centre such as by sending a Hub Status Report and receiving official updates and share information by setting up a Public Information Board to provide information to the community. 
  • Needs and Offers role is to match the needs that have been identified in the community with the offers of support. This involves updating a Needs Display Board with requests for help from people in the community and recording offers of help on an Offers Display Board. Volunteers match needs with offers (e.g., people needing help around their house are matched with appropriate offers). 
  • Reception role is to ensure that the Community Emergency Hub is a friendly place that offers a bonding space for people to come together. The role will set up a Reception to welcome people and a Community Space where people can have a drink/chat. 

Building the capability in advance of disruption 

Community Emergency Hubs are one of the interconnected modules forming part of a Local Resilience Capability which must be built and exercised in advance of a disruption. Local resilience partnerships can encourage the formation of Community Emergency Hubs by firstly starting the conversation with communities via a community development workshop. This workshop can consider why running a Community Emergency Hub is important, what assets the community can draw upon, and what activities the community can deliver during disruption.  

To assist local resilience partnerships and communities to develop their Community Emergency Hub capability, the NCSR+ has co-produced a suite of resources available online, including: 

  • Part 1: ‘The Why’ – Briefing for resilience partners; 
  • Part 2: Workshop for resilience partners and communities; 
  • Part 3: ‘The How’ – Community Emergency Hub guide; 
  • Part 4: Safety briefing for volunteers. 

The second Local Resilience Capability module on creating a simpler approach to the coordination of spontaneous volunteers during disruption, can also be accessed via the NCSR+ webpage.  

Dr Andrew McClelland is a research fellow working on societal resilience and part of the NCSR+ and RBOC+ team in the Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester.