Water: Community-Based Water Resiliency
Community-Based Water Resiliency
EPA's Community-Based Water Resiliency (CBWR) initiative aims to:
- Increase overall community preparedness by raising awareness of water sector
interdependencies and enhance integration of water sector into community
emergency preparedness and response efforts; and
- Increase preparedness and resiliency of drinking water and wastewater utilities by delivering tools and information to increase community collaboration and bolster security practices.
A Day Without Water: A video introduction to the CBWR tool
Drinking water and wastewater utilities provide a valuable service in our communities. Many communities are not prepared for an interruption in these services and are unaware of the need to prepare for alternate methods to begin the process of building resiliency.
Community-Based Water Resiliency Widget
The CBWR widget is an epa.gov application that provides a link to the CBWR web page and the CBWR electronic tool, containing over 400 resources to help prepare your community for a water service interruption.
Once you have added the CBWR widget to your web page, the content updates automatically.
Critical Water Sector Interdependencies - All other critical infrastructure sectors have interdependencies with drinking water and/or wastewater services. Many community services fall under these sectors and their operations could be severely affected by a water service disruption. The eighteen critical infrastructure/key resource (CI/KR) designated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are listed below:
Interactive poster
on water sector interdependencies (PDF)
(1 pg, 1MB)
Water sector interdependencies text version (PDF)
(10 pp, 125K)
- Agriculture and Food
- Banking and Finance
- Chemical
- Commercial Facilities
- Communications
- Critical Manufacturing
- Dams
- Defense Industrial Base
- Emergency Services
- Energy
- Government Facilities
- Healthcare and Public Health
- Information Technology
- National Monuments and Icons
- Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste
- Postal and Shipping
- Transportation Systems
- Water
Download the Community-Based Water Resiliency Electronic Tool - The CBWR electronic tool is an easy way to assess your community's current resiliency to water service disruptions and learn about tools and resources that can be used to enhance resiliency. A main component of the tool is the self assessment, which provides users with questions tailored to their stakeholder group and culminates in a self-assessment summary report. The report details the strengths and weaknesses of the users' community's resiliency and recommends tools and resources that can be used to enhance resiliency. Users can then navigate to the CBWR toolbox, where they can find more information about the recommended tools and resources. For help with the tool, see the Community-Based Water Resilience Quick Start Guide (PDF) (2 pp, 914K, About PDF).
Related Materials
Many other resources are available to enhance the resiliency of communities to all-hazard threats. These resources include:
Community-Based Water Resiliency Resources
- Critical Water Sector Interdependencies Fact Sheets:
- General Interdependencies Fact Sheet (PDF) (2 pp, 246K)
- Water and Healthcare Sector Interdependencies: Working Together Towards Resiliency (PDF) (2 pp, 740K)
EPA 817-F-10-019, December 2010 - Water and Emergency Services: A Critical Community Interdependency (PDF) (2 pp, 801K)
EPA 817-F-10-018, December 2010
- Water Sector Interdependency Poster (PDF) (1 pg, 1MB)
- CBWR Brochure (PDF) (2 pp, 241K)