Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative

The Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative is focused on pre-event hazard mitigation and risk reduction in Lane County. This organization incorporates partners and stakeholders from multiple agencies across the county who work collaboratively toward pre-event resilience, efficient response and recovery, and building cross-jurisdictional relationships. The collaborative began as a series of workshops with elected officials and staff in the fall of 2019 to better understand interest in developing a collaborative organization in the region.

The Oregon Policy Lab partnered with the Wayne Morris Center to provide the Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative with facilitators and data analysis at the workshops. The workshop objectives were to better understand community needs of participants, how communities could contribute to a collaborative, and what benefits could be seen from participation with a resilience collaborative. The data collected at the workshops showed an interest in collaboration and the need for a framework and governance structure to ensure an effective collaborative. This informs next steps in the planning process, which include defining suitable collaborative structures for the Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative.

The Policy Lab has continued to work on this effort after the conclusion of the fall meetings. Three MPA graduate students in the Capstone course have been conducting rigorous research on collaborative best practices and successful governance models. This work began in January of 2019 and will end in June with recommendations for frameworks to best suit the Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative participants. Research includes analyzing other collaborative models based on governance and structure, and conducting interviews with Lane County stakeholders. For more information about the Capstone course, please see our January blog post.

Student Work Updates

Case study research and interviews with Lane County stakeholders and representatives of other collaboratives.

Representatives from local, state and federal governments from around Lane County gather to hear from the students on preliminary findings about collaborative group structures and governance best practices. Participating in this meeting will provide further direction on the nature and form of the Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative.

Students met with the organization’s steering committee to provide an overview of the scope of work and gain additional feedback or insights from the committee. Feedback from the committee included the need to address what the financial, staffing, or resource expectations would be for participating jurisdictions and creating a balance between an over wieldy organization and one without enough power to adequately connect participants. 

For more information about the Lane Regional Resiliency Collaborative, visit their website.