From boardrooms to classrooms to conference rooms, resilience has been a buzz word in the disaster community for some time now. How do we incorporate resilience into disaster planning? How can resilience be measured and communicated? And the always popular mind-pretzel: When we say “resilience” what exactly do we mean?

Now, a new National Academies publication could help move the conversation from talking resilience talk to walking the resilience walk. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative, lays out six key recommendations for integrating resilience into public and private disaster planning.

Of course, before they could do that, they had tackle defining resilience. The report ultimately labeled resilience as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.”

The report, which aims to create “a more disaster-resilient America by 2030,” proposes ideas such as a national document database for disaster-related data sharing, cooperative risk management strategies, government-supported local and regional resilience coalitions, and the adoption of federal resilience policies and programs.

“This vision of the future requires a new national culture of disaster resilience in which everyone takes responsibility for resilience to both natural and human-induced disasters. All communities and levels of government know their roles and responsibilities in building resilience, and they act on them” states the report summary.

Notably, the report committee recommends that the Department of Homeland Security, as well as other federal, state, and local agencies, develop a National Resilience Scorecard that would measure resilience. While domestic and international organizations have created resilience measures, the United States has no consistent national standard for resilience measurement, making it difficult to collect uniform data. Given the complexity of the concept, the authors encourage a national measurement strategy that incorporates diverse components of resilience but is adaptable across communities.

The United States isn’t the only one noodling resilience lately though. It’s also been on the agenda of the European Union, Japan, and even a coalition of small Pacific islands.

Earlier this month, the European Union released a policy it hopes will increase resilience by encouraging its emergency and development arms to work more closely together, according to OOSKAnews.

According to a European press release, the policy is a game changer, particularly in terms of balancing development assistance and disaster planning.

"This is a substantial shift in mentality and practice: from distributing aid to drought-affected people in order to survive until the next drought to investing in the long-run—building irrigation systems, promoting more resistant crops, helping pastoralists manage their livestock," EU development commissioner Andris Piebalgs told The Guardian.

Resilience is not only a more sustainable approach to disaster planning, it might also be more economically sound.

The EU report found that putting four Euros toward disaster prevention saves an additional four to five Euros in post-disaster aid. An Islamic Relief report released a week before the EU policy had similar findings.

The benefits to resilience-based disaster planning are also being recognized in the Pacific. At a recent meeting on disaster risk management in Japan, a joint report released by Japan and the World Bank highlighted the importance of preventative disaster measures. According to The Japan Times Online, the event also spotlighted personal resilience stories as told by a diverse group of leaders.

Just below the equator, the Pacific Risk Resilience program is underway, reports the Solomon Times. The program targets four island nations—Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands—and is designed to integrate risk management and development strategies and strengthen community resilience. It is a joint effort, backed by the UN Development Programme and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).

“On top of the climate change adaptation issues all Pacific countries must face, Vanuatu, Solomon islands, Tonga and Fiji are the four countries most at risk of natural disasters in the Pacific” John Davidson, AusAID Minister-Counsellor Pacific, told the Solomon Times. “Disaster risk management and climate change adaptation share a common focus—building community resilience.”

With a common goal in sight, the disaster community from the United States to the European Union (and everywhere in between), is moving resilience forward from an abstract concept to a set of best practices. These strategies will hopefully save lives, time, and money but only if we actually collect and act on the new resilience data.

“Enhancing the nation's resilience will not be easy, nor will it be cheap,” stated Susan Cutter, chair of the committee that authored the report. “But the urgency is there, and we need to begin the process now in order to build a national ethos that will make the nation safer, stronger, more secure, and more sustainable.”