The COVID-19 pandemic has been labelled as the largest peacetime emergency that Britain has faced in the last 100 years.

The complexity and scope of the pandemic has required close collaboration between a diverse array of organisations – from emergency services to multiple levels of government, to private and charitable organisations, and an assortment of experts and specialist bodies.

ResilienceDirect – an online private ‘network’ overseen by the Cabinet Office – has been a crucial technology enabling and enhancing communication, coordination, and collaboration between the diverse bodies that were involved in the UK’s COVID-19 response.

Over the course of the COVID-19 response, researchers based at Loughborough University have been studying how ResilienceDirect is utilised in a major incident.

Dr Daniel Sage and Dr Chris Zebrowski with support from Research Assistant Dr Nina Jörden, have now produced the first independent evidence-based report for emergency practitioners, national policymakers, and scholars, to understand how ResilienceDirect shapes emergency collaboration.

The report identifies the vital role that ResilienceDirect has played in enabling communication and collaboration amongst the many agencies involved in the COVID-19 response, plus a number of areas where ResilienceDirect could be better utilised and further developed in order to maximise its capacity to support complex emergency responses in the future.

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