It is time to get on the same page in the Community Risk Reduction (CRR) Playbook. As attention continues to increase, our profession must join forces and ensure CRR is viewed as an action driver that leads to data-driven decisions to ensure communities are safe places to live, work, learn, and play. In this session, the NFPA CRR team will provide an overview of the process outlined in NFPA 1300, Standard on Community Risk Assessment and Community Risk Reduction Plan Development. They will debunk myths, highlight key components, and explain how this standard provides the common language to describe our work that is critical in normalizing CRR across our communities. Attendees will leave the session with the blueprint of what CRR entails, why community risk assessment (CRA) is the critical first step, and how to implement the processes designed to drive community safety.

In today’s world, community leaders make many challenging decisions every day. City managers, fire chiefs, municipal directors, and other agency leaders must consider safety, equity, efficiency, and accountability in their planning processes. In this session, speakers will layer the concept of equity across the NFPA Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem to explore how this concept impacts community safety. Speakers will explain how the Community Risk Reduction process drives real-world actions across the E’s to meet varied needs across all neighborhoods while aligning to modern community values. The speakers will share power-packed strategies that highlight the roles of both equal and equitable resource deployment, the importance of risk-to-resource matching, and the need to recognize community strengths and challenges when planning prevention initiatives.

As a highly visible public health initiative, Fire Prevention Week™ (FPW™) provides important opportunities for safety professionals to connect with residents, students, business owners, and visitors. In this session, a community outreach officer, a fire and life safety educator, and a community risk reduction specialist explain how goal-focused, data-driven practices helped them add some *POW* to their FPW strategies. Presenters will explain how they leverage FPW to strengthen relationships in unique neighborhoods, teach important fire safety behaviors across broad bands of the community, and tailor delivery of safety initiatives to meet the needs of high-risk residents. When partnered with community data, FPW gets louder, bolder, and more impactful. As presenters share authentic examples of local FPW campaigns, past and present, attendees will be encouraged to steal ideas and consider local tweaks that will lead to impactful FPW efforts.

The community risk reduction (CRR) profession is chock full of passionate, intelligent specialists working to apply this valuable process to drive safety in the neighborhoods they serve. Unfortunately, too often, these CRR rock stars work without the support of their colleagues or their command staff and struggle to gain traction. In this session, insights of experienced fire officers will inspire attendees to develop plans to increase buy-in and normalize CRR as a function of all roles across the fire service and a vehicle for advancing the local mission of the fire department. Presenters will unpack strategies designed to encourage staff outside of the prevention division to embrace the CRR process, to identify natural contributions that support CRR, and to manage the firehouse CRR antagonists.

Don’t miss this exciting session in which the NFPA CRR team will unveil CRAIG 1300, the NFPA Community Risk Assessment Insight Generator! Aligned to NFPA 1300 and driven by the feedback of 300 communities who participated in the NFPA Community Risk Assessment pilot project, CRAIG 1300 is an exciting new line of digital dashboards designed to help community leaders and their local partners crunch the numbers and tell their unique data stories. During the session, the NFPA community risk reduction (CRR) team will provide a demonstration of CRAIG 1300, explain how CRAIG 1300 alleviates common struggles associated with the community risk assessment (CRA) process, and share real-world examples of how the dashboards have been used to support a wide range of safety initiatives beyond the CRA process. If data get your heart racing, you won’t want to miss this session!

Over the past 20 years, community risk reduction (CRR) has been emerging as an important tool for innovative fire departments. As more and more communities embrace this process as an important value-add, it is time to give CRR the power boost it deserves! This session will highlight a historic collaboration between the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and their innovative project to chart the course for modern fire and emergency services. In this session, fire service and community leaders will share the story behind the initiative that resulted in a white paper highlighting critical issues that will impact fire and emergency services in the 21st century. SPOILER ALERT: CRR plays a vital role in the work that communities will do to keep their residents secure, businesses running, and first responders safe for years to come!

If asked to describe your neighborhood, you would likely share stories about the qualities you appreciate such as local scenery, favorite businesses, and helpful neighbors. While the phrase “community risk reduction (CRR)” may direct your thinking to challenges and hazards, it is equally as important to consider the positives! In this session, presenters will explain why local risk assessments should include, if not start, with discussions around community strengths and how NFPA 1300 guides CRR professionals to explore local capacity to mitigate risks during the discovery process. Additionally, presenters will provide boots-on-the-ground examples that emphasize how local partners positively impact every step of the CRR process, from community risk assessment (CRA) to risk prioritization to evaluation through contributions of work, wisdom, wealth, and influence.

When assessing and prioritizing risk in the communities served across a jurisdiction, great variation can exist from station to station and neighborhood to neighborhood. There are many variables that need to be considered on a smaller scale of the station-based community. Speakers from Arvada, Colorado and Toronto, Ontario will discuss their innovative approaches and outcomes related to neighborhood-focused community risk reduction (CRR). They will describe strategies around station-based community risk assessments (CRAs), station-based risk prioritization, and implementation of hyperlocal CRR plans. In addition to unpacking the challenges of this approach, Chief Harrington and Chief Cocco will discuss the positive outcomes of their teams’ work such as improved relevancy, greater impact, and increased engagement across fire service personnel in the CRR process.

So, you want to integrate local wildfire risk into your community risk reduction (CRR) work? You may be further along than you realize! Many wildfire risk assessments and tools used by fire departments examine similar profiles as your community risk assessment (CRA) and align with the process outlined in NFPA 1300. Hear some big ideas from our friends in Texas! Presenters from the Austin City Fire Department and the Lake Travis Fire Rescue Service discuss how they advanced wildfire risk understanding to internal fire department stakeholders as well as external partners across their communities. They will share how local risk-profile data and visualizations from the CRA dashboard provided insights that guided their approaches. This engaging panel discussion will incorporate different practitioners working towards the common goal of wildfire risk reduction and preparedness. It will be moderated by the Firewise USA® program manager.

Ricotta be kidding me! You aren’t using the E’s and -Ize yet? Whether you are new to CRR or looking to boost the impact of your existing community risk reduction (CRR) initiative, this session is a gouda one for you! This session will outline a mildly cheesy theoretical framework designed to drive impactful CRR initiatives with modern flair. The framework addresses person-focused strategies and system-level actions that every community should consider to make feta CRR plans. While the concept of the E’s of prevention have been around longer than a well-aged cheddar, they will be presented with a fresh lens and as part of an interconnected strategy. As always, Soul Swissters & CRR Enthusiasts, Chelsea Rubadou and Karen Berard-Reed, will apply principles of FUNctional learning in this entertaining session. Any way you slice it, you better brie-lieve you’ll leave this session with instant-action takeaways to strengthen your local CRR plans.