VII. Resilience

Executive Summary

Resilience refers to the ability of a society to withstand strategic shocks and to recover easily and quickly from them. Resilience combines civil and societal emergency preparedness as well as military capabilities.

To generate a holistic understanding of the whole-of-government and whole-of-society nature of Resilience, the Layered Resilience Concept breaks down Resilience into three layers: Societal, Civil, and Military. The Societal layer includes the population as a whole, while the Civil layer refers to public and private sector actors. The Military layer’s task is to deter and defend. It also provides support to the civil environment when requested to do so. Alliance resilience is built on these interdependent layers.

NATO has agreed on viewing national resilience through the lens of the seven baseline requirements (7BLR). They reflect the three core functions of civil preparedness that must be maintained even under the most demanding conditions: continuity of government, essential services to the population, and civil support to the military.

1 – Assured continuity of government and critical government services

2 – Resilient energy supply

3 – Ability to deal effectively with uncontrolled movement of people

4 – Resilient food and water resources

5 – Resilience to deal with mass casualties

6 – Resilient civil communications systems

7 – Resilient civil transportation systems