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With 75% of us projected to live in cities by 2050 we better get used to the challenges that city life can bring. And getting a sustainable supply of healthy, nutritious and convenient food to everyone is going to be one of those challenges.

To many of us in western Europe, the UK included, modern slavery is thought to be something that happens in other parts of the world, mostly involving people from poorer regions. So, you might be surprised to hear that over 10,000 people in the UK were identified as victims of modern slavery in 2020 alone.

Ever wonder what might be round the next corner? Few of us predicted a global pandemic on the scale we’ve just seen. Not that many factored in a Russia-Ukraine conflict into their 2022 planning. There will always be ‘known unknowns’ but it helps to be better prepared.

As we seek to recover from the pandemic’s disruption to manufacturing and retail, the impact from the Russia-Ukraine conflict is certainly being felt through supply chains and transportation corridors and, of course, through disruption to yields, even temporarily, in food commodities, including wheat and sunflower oil. Now added to this are impacts from China as the country continues to try to achieve COVID-zero status.

Resilience First CEO, Mike Rooney, recently took part in FPA’s podcast on Resilience. The main message from Mike is that resilience is about leadership, governance and empowerment and is much more than just keeping a risk register. Businesses need to be adaptable and agile.

The UK government has published its much-awaited Energy Security Strategy. With a focus on securing a more resilient UK energy supply free from foreign dependence, and retain the UK’s net-zero ambitions, there was no surprise that the government confirmed its intention to construct eight new nuclear reactors and to make planning systems for offshore wind turbines easier.

Built environment design companies consider a range of resilience metrics within their projects. However, the internal assessment of these factors within the company itself is harder to establish. Although risks can be measured against business operations, it does not capture the full extent of how resilient the company is, or what elements are missing to improve the organisation’s current status.

Pushing the Boundaries of Innovation in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure is the latest in a series of reports from our partner, The International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI), on sustainable and resilient infrastructure. ICSI’s new Innovation Action Track is designed to profile originality in engineering practice and solutions and support the sustainable and resilient learning for others from these.

Two years on from the UK’s first lockdown, the hospitality sector remains at the forefront of major pressures when one considers the global uncertainty the pandemic continues to generate, the labour and supply fallouts from Brexit, climate change, and now the conflict in Ukraine.

Resilience First, in partnership with the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI), has today announced the launch of the Engineering Leadership Group (ELG), a new engagement platform to capture the voice of global engineering firms.

Resilience First, the world’s largest global business network with a mission to advance resilience best practice, is delighted to announce a partnership with the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce (GMCC).

On 15 February 2022, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced he was committing £90M to help unlock more than £500M of private sector investment through green bonds. With the move towards green investment and an increasing focus on Environmental, Social Governance (ESG) strategies, green bonds are rapidly emerging as an attractive proposition for many cities, governments, and private companies.

Resilience First is part of a unique collaboration to co-create a Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP) that will present the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments in accessible and targeted summaries that can help inform action at the city scale. It will be published as a four-volume series over the course of the 2022 calendar year culminating in a report to be released at COP 27.

Our second guide to Emotional Resilience, ‘Lessons from the real world: A practical guide after crises and major incidents’, looks at a model for crisis and trauma resilience built around three pillars, namely Resistance, Resilience and Recovery.

The Kedarnath tragedy in Uttarakhand (India) in mid-2013 highlights lessons around resilience which are still pertinent today. Savin Bansal, as Master's student at UCL, reviews some of those lessons and the need not just for better early warning systems but also the people to put the warnings into practical effect.

How can we help improve resilience of young people, knowing that they will become the leaders of tomorrow and wanting the skills and resolve to rise to new challenges. Here are some pointers that may help, pointers that identify the key ingredients of what it takes to be resilient.

As the scale and frequency of severe disasters are likely to increase in the coming years, climate change being just one driver, then it is important to overcome the impediments to inaction and not place an over-reliance on early warning systems to overcome people-centric deficits. A new report sheds light on how to enhance warnings.

A Ministerial statement published on 11 January gives the government's position on the outcome of the consultation exercise around any potential 'Protect Duty' legislation to improve security measures that could protect the public from terrorist attacks. Resilience First has been very supportive of the initiative since the beginning and reviews the latest response.

Resilience First, in partnership with Cranfield University and Accenture, will soon be releasing a report on digital resilience that will look at developments to enhance and challenge the resilience of organisations.

With more properties at risk of flooding, certain insurers are adopting new ways to help customers deal with the trauma and the damage. We can expect to see more innovation from the sector as costs rise for all parties.

The House of Lords' Select Committee on Risk Assessment and Risk Planning has published a report on 'Preparing for Extreme Risks: Building a Resilient Society'. It is an important contribution to the debate on national resilience following the UK Government's Integrated Review.

The concept of Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) is an old one but the UK MOD has recently updated its doctrine on how Defence can contribute to the nation's resilience through MACA.

Control Risks has recently launched its RiskMap 2022. In this article, CR's analysts offer their views on the risks in the year ahead.