Overview
The objective of this assignment is to deepen your understanding of risk and resilience by critically evaluating an assessment framework, a completed assessment, or a resilience strategy or plan.
This includes examining the motivations and justifications for the product, the methods, results and outputs, and the relationship between the product and action. We will do this by finding various examples from a variety of sectors and settings and critically evaluating them using the understanding developed in course discussions, assigned readings, and self-guided research.
The challenge here is that while resilience is well established conceptually, and while there are many examples of resilience plans and strategies, approaches remain disparate and relatively nascent. For example, BC’s Ministry of Health is operationalizing a health system resilience framework that has existed since 2015 with little application. You will not encounter a perfect assessment, framework, or product. Instead, you’ll encounter best efforts, promising practices, and potentially even projects and approaches that failed. By assessing these products and processes, you will situate yourself within the current state of play of risk and resilience assessment and planning for your settings and sectors.
Instructions
- Attend the live session (or watch the recording) during which the learners and instructor will search the web for examples, and develop criteria for critical evaluation. You will choose a risk or resilience product from this approved list and will use the criteria we develop to conduct your critical evaluation.
- You are encouraged to provide insights about the authors and institutions involved, as well as any information you can glean about the motivations or justifications for the work. Who is the audience for the work?
- Consider how the document or framework is laid out. Is the structure conventional? How is it effective or lacking?
- What are the general strengths and limitations of the approach? What do you think is missing, incomplete, or mischaracterized? Whose voices were included and excluded? If appropriate, include a discussion about how the process or product you have chosen could centre Indigenous knowledge or otherwise contribute to reconciliation efforts.
- Is there any indication of how this assessment has led to change in its setting or sector? What can you glean about how the assessment was intended to be used? Was it actually used in that way? This could require additional web research to determine whether the product or process has led to change.
Requirements
- Original synthesis – maximum word count is 1,000 words
- Your essay must be submitted as a Word document and must conform to currently accepted APA standards for formatting.
- The assignment must be submitted on or before the due date.
Associated Learning Outcomes
- Examine the role of reconciliation as a component of climate adaptation and low carbon resilience (Learning Outcome 1.3)
- Integrate contributions (ideas and actions) from multiple disciplines to generate new ideas and concepts and to support recommendations, strategies, and solutions (Learning Outcome 2.3)
- Apply transdisciplinary thinking to complex climate related problems and issues (Learning Outcome 2.4)
- Facilitate multi- and trans-disciplinary discussions and collaboration (Learning Outcome 4.3)
- Apply lateral, creative, and future thinking to the field of climate adaptation (Learning Outcome 6.3)
Assessment Criteria
In addition to the learning outcomes, assessment criteria will be based on the writing assessment rubric found on In addition to the learning outcomes, assessment criteria will be based on the Academic Paper/report Assessment Rubric found found on the MACAL program website under Program Resources, Assessment.
Weight: 20%
Submit: your assignment to the Assignment 2: Critical Evaluation of Resilience Typologies dropbox in Moodle.