The Building Resilience Coalition is going to Spokane

The 2018 Annual Summit of the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) is taking place July 22 – 26 in Spokane, Washington, and the Building Resilience Coalition will be there as a Platinum Sponsor.

PNWER is recognized as the model for regional and bi-national cooperation, providing a platform for collaboration among public, private, academic, and non-profit stakeholders to work together as a region in pursuit of common goals.

Created in 1991 by the states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington, the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, PNWER has emerged as an important vehicle to address the shared challenges in the region.

The Annual Summits are designed to enable public officials, legislators and business leaders to jointly explore best practices, promote regional relationships, and to develop action plans for addressing these challenges.

This year’s Summit includes a  Disaster Resilience Symposium, which is a great opportunity to inform elected officials, legislators and others about the importance of resiliency planning.

That is why the Coalition is pleased to sponsor a keynote address by Evan Reis, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the U.S. Resiliency Council.

The pioneering work of the U.S. Resiliency Council has helped greatly to raise awareness of the need to rethink how we build our cities and towns to make them more resilient to hazards thought impossible only a decade ago.

During the four-day conference, Building Resilience Coalition representatives will connect with delegates from across the region to impress upon them the need for better disaster mitigation planning.

We anticipate that over 550 attendees will be at the Summit, including  state, provincial and territorial legislators,  corporate CEOs or VPs,  NGO executive directors, federal legislators, University Presidents, and other governmental officials.

“These are the people we need to connect with to spread the message about the mission of the Building Resilience Coalition,” said William (Bill) Larson, Vice President – Marketing, CalPortland and principal spokesperson for the Coalition.

His comments were echoed by Diane Warner, Executive Director of the Northwest Cement Council, who noted “resiliency is becoming a critically important public policy issue across the region. We need to ensure that home owners, businesses and communities are protected from the impacts of fire, floods and more frequent extreme weather incidents.”

“The many industries represented in the Building Resilience Coalition are well positioned to provide the products and services needed”, noted Bill Larson, “but we need legislators and municipal leaders working with us.  The PNWER Summit is a golden opportunity to make those critically important connections.”

If you are interested in attending the PNWER Summit on July 22 – 26,  you can register on line here.

Check out the PNWER Summit Program here

Editor’s Note: The Building Resilience Coalition has assembled a collection of informative articles and research briefs to better prepare Coalition members for the PNWER Summit. Check out these  valuable resources here.