Prototyping a Local Resilience Policy Design Canvas

Designing policies especially with regard to the preparation for, coping with and adapting to crises and extreme events, i.e. concerning resilience, is a complex undertaking since it’s marked by high uncertainties, trade-offs and complexities concerning the envisaged objectives, their systemic impacts as well as long-term casual effects (cf. Fraser and Kirbyshire, 2017, p. 5).
The objective of this working paper is to develop a tool for enhancing the local policy design in the light of crises and extreme events. Since there is no yet an actionable policy canvas ex-isting for resilience policy, the Local Resilience Policy Design Canvas (LRPDC) aims at clos-ing this gap. Policy makers are guided to (co-)design policies that produce, deliver and sustain the public good of resilience. The prototyped LRPDC represents an analytical and strategic tool to support the design, evaluation, and improvement of local resilience policy by facilitating iterative dialogue and co-design between and among local policy makers, local and external actors.
Based on an unstructured literature review, the LRPDC has been developed by adjusting the already existing policy design canvas for Finnish creative ecosystems (see Siivonen et al., 2025, pp. 6, 23) to the stakes of resilience.
The LRPDC offers an agile and practical tool to guide local policy makers through the process of (re-) designing local policies dedicated to strengthening the resilience of the local territories regarding crises and extreme events.