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Resilience Council
Call for Evidence: Resilience Council Agenda Item RS-001 — Reopen Standard
10 February 2026 | Note | Circulated
Call for evidence: Resilience Council agenda item RS-001
From: Gregorio Yap, Chair, Resilience Council, Tacloban, Philippines
To: Small-business owners and other interested participants
1. Purpose of this call
1.The Resilience Council invites evidence for agenda item RS-001, provisionally titled the Reopen Standard. The Council is examining what happens to a micro or small business when a disaster interrupts its ability to trade, and what practical commitments could help it reopen and remain open.
2.The proposed issue has three parts: the time taken to decide an insurance claim; the time taken to provide bridge funding after a disaster has been declared; and the availability of continuity-planning support suited to micro businesses. These are questions for evidence, not findings that any particular insurer, lender, platform, public authority or other organisation has failed to act.
3.The Council is not asking members to disclose the name of their business, identify a customer or supplier, or make a public accusation against a named organisation. Reports should describe practices and consequences. Where an organisation type matters, use general terms such as “an insurer,” “a local bank,” “a large marketplace,” “a payment provider,” or “a public relief programme.”
4.This call is open to owners and operators of small businesses in any country. The Council seeks accounts of different hazards, locations, business models and recovery paths. A report can describe a completed recovery, an ongoing
interruption, a near miss, or a preparedness measure that worked. Evidence that complicates or challenges the proposed issue is as useful as evidence that supports it.
2. Background and scope
5.A disaster can interrupt a business even when its premises remain standing. A closure may follow physical damage, loss of electricity or communications, restricted access, interrupted deliveries, staff displacement, loss of records, damage to equipment, or a sudden fall in customers. A business may be able to reopen in a limited form before it can resume its normal operations. The Council therefore asks about the practical meaning of “reopen,” not only the date a door first opens.
6.Small firms may have little spare cash and may depend on a small number of workers, suppliers, customers or operating locations. The Council is interested in how these features affect the order and timing of recovery: what must be paid first, what can wait, and which decisions or services determine whether trade can resume. It does not assume that every business needs the same support or that every delay has the same cause.
7.The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction states that small and medium-sized enterprises bear about 75 per cent of business disaster losses, and that disaster-risk-reduction measures can reduce losses by up to a third.[1] The Council cites these figures as context for examining business resilience. They do not establish the cause of a particular member’s loss or prove that any specific proposed remedy will work in every country.
8.The Council also notes the international policy context of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, including paragraphs 30(o) and 36(c), which address business continuity and the role of the private sector, with attention to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The Council uses this context to frame questions about continuity planning and resilience; it does not treat the Framework as a substitute for national law, insurance terms, or local disaster arrangements.
9.A UNDRR report on resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises cites a Japan METI survey in which 8 per cent of prepared SMEs had not recovered sales, compared with 19 per cent of unprepared SMEs.[2] This is a case from a particular survey, not a universal estimate and not a promise that preparedness alone prevents a loss. The Council seeks evidence about what preparation is realistic for the smallest firms, what support enables it, and what obstacles make it difficult.
10.The working scope is business continuity and reopening after a disaster or serious hazard-related interruption. Reports may concern floods, storms, earthquakes, fires, extreme heat, or another event that materially disrupted trade. The Council is not limiting evidence to a formally declared disaster: it wants to understand how declaration status affects access to assistance, while recognising that businesses can suffer severe disruption where no formal declaration is made.
11.The Council is not, through this call, deciding insurance coverage, setting a legal definition of disaster, determining eligibility for public relief, or evaluating any individual claim. It is asking whether common practices create recurring barriers and whether a common operational standard could address them. Any eventual draft would have to be considered through the Reseated process and would not itself change a contract or law.
3. International and legal comparison
12.The Council does not set out a country-by-country legal table or claim that a particular deadline is already required by law. Members who know a relevant law may identify it in a submission, preferably with its official title, jurisdiction and provision, but should distinguish personal understanding from legal advice.
13.The Sendai Framework is useful here as a shared policy reference for reducing disaster risk and strengthening continuity, including for smaller businesses. It does not answer the operational questions before the Council: how quickly an insurer should decide a claim; when temporary funding should become available; what a micro business needs in a continuity plan; or which organisation should provide that help. Those questions require evidence about existing arrangements and their effects.
14.The Council is especially interested in differences between formal commitments and what an owner experiences in practice. A written process may set out a route for making a claim or applying for support, while the owner may face missing records, uncertain information, repeated requests, limited internet access, a language barrier, or an unclear point of contact. Please describe the steps and consequences you observed, without assuming that your account establishes a legal breach.
15.The proposed Reopen Standard is framed as an operational request for evidence: insurance claims decided within 30 days; bridge funding within 10 days of a declared disaster; and continuity-planning support for micro businesses. These proposed timeframes are not presented as existing legal obligations, settled benchmarks, or guaranteed outcomes. The Council is asking whether they are appropriate, achievable and useful; what “decision” and “bridge funding” should mean; which circumstances require exceptions; and what safeguards would prevent a fast but incomplete or unsuitable decision.
16.If you submit legal or regulatory material, explain how it affected the actual process. For instance, identify whether a rule determined a deadline, eligibility condition, notice requirement or appeal route, and say whether you saw the rule applied. Do not send confidential legal advice or documents that you are not entitled to share. The Council may ask for clarification, but it will not act as a lawyer or resolve an individual dispute.
4. Questions for owners and operators
17.You may answer only the questions relevant to your experience. A concise account with dates and clear steps can be more useful than a long general statement. If a question does not apply, say so. If you do not know an answer or cannot verify a detail, identify that uncertainty.
What happened, and when? Describe the hazard or interruption, the approximate date or period, and the way it affected your ability to trade. You may use a broad location, such as a region or country, rather than a town or address.
What did “reopening” mean for your business? When did you first resume any trading, and when—if at all—did you return to ordinary operations? Which essential activities, staff, equipment, premises, supplies or services remained unavailable?
What costs or losses arose while you could not trade or were operating at reduced capacity? You may provide a range or describe the type of cost instead of giving an exact amount. Please distinguish, where possible, direct repair costs, continuing fixed costs, lost sales, replacement costs and other expenses.
Did you have insurance that might cover any part of the loss? If so, what steps did you take to report the claim, what information was requested, and when did you receive acknowledgement, requests for more information, a decision, or payment? If there was no claim, explain only what you are comfortable sharing about why.
For this call, the proposed insurance measure concerns a decision within 30 days. From your experience, what event should start the clock: first notice, receipt of a complete application, or another point? What should count as a decision? What happened in practice, and what effect did the time taken have on reopening?
Did you seek bridge funding or another temporary source of cash after the event? This could include public assistance, a loan, a grant, an advance, a payment arrangement or help from another source. When did you first seek it, what information or conditions were required, when did funds become usable, and what gap remained?
The proposed bridge-funding measure refers to provision within 10 days of a declared disaster. Would that time be useful for your business? What should qualify as funding being “provided”—approval, availability, transfer, or receipt? If no formal disaster was declared, what happened to your ability to obtain timely support?
Before the event, did you have a continuity plan or any practical preparation? This may include keeping records safely, identifying alternate suppliers or premises, protecting equipment, arranging communications, cross-training workers, or knowing how to contact support. What was useful, and what was too costly, complex or difficult to maintain?
What kind of continuity-planning support would have been useful to a business of your size? Consider format, language, cost, time, access to a knowledgeable person, and whether advice was specific enough to act on. Who, if anyone, offered support?
Which steps made recovery easier or harder? Were responsibilities clear? Did you have to repeat information to different organisations? Were you able to contact a decision-maker? Did any process depend on a smartphone, reliable internet, a formal accounting system, a particular language, or records that had been damaged?
Did you receive an explanation of a delay, refusal, amount offered, or next step? If an explanation was missing or unclear, describe what you needed to know. Do not include the name of an individual employee or a private contact detail.
What would you change first? Please identify a specific practice, deadline, form of assistance or point of contact. Who would be in a position to adopt that change: an insurer, lender, public body, business network, supplier, property owner, service provider, or another type of organisation?
Did any proposed measure fail to fit your circumstances? For instance, would a fixed deadline be impractical where damage is complex, records are unavailable, or a hazard continues? What transparent alternative would protect an affected business without creating an open-ended delay?
Is there evidence that challenges the idea that a common standard is needed, or that points to a better solution? The Council welcomes cases where existing practices worked well, as well as accounts of difficulty.
5. What counts as evidence
18.Evidence may be a first-hand account, a dated sequence of events, a copy or description of a process, a public document, an anonymised record, or a careful account of what another person directly observed. A submission does not need to include formal paperwork. Owners may have lost documents in the event or may never have received written explanations. A clear description of what happened and what is uncertain is still useful.
19.If you can safely provide them, useful details include approximate dates; the interval between an application and a response; the number and type of steps required; whether information had to be submitted more than once; the amount or range at stake; and the operational consequence of waiting. Where a date is approximate, mark it as approximate. Where a figure is an estimate, label it as such.
20.Evidence can also concern what worked: a prompt decision, a straightforward application, a useful continuity plan, an effective local contact, or an arrangement that enabled a business to reopen. Include the conditions that made it work. A successful case is not automatically transferable to every country or business, but it may identify a practical option worth considering.
21.Do not send original identity documents, bank credentials, passwords, full payment-card details, or information that would give someone access to an account. Do not send documents containing personal data about workers, customers or other people unless you have permission and have removed unnecessary identifying details. Do not expose a person to risk to strengthen a submission.
22.Please do not identify your business in a report. If a document carries a business name, address, account number, claim number or other identifier, remove or obscure it before sharing where possible. You may refer to a business by a neutral description such as “my repair shop” or “a small food business,” but do not supply details that would identify it indirectly if that would defeat your privacy choice.
6. Privacy, anonymity and use of submissions
23.Members are anonymous unless they choose a public seat. The Council asks for information about business practices and patterns, not a public list of individual firms. Please indicate whether your account is first-hand, submitted with another person’s permission, or based on material you are authorised to share. Do not submit another person’s story as your own.
24.The Council will review reports for relevance, clarity and possible duplication. It may contact a contributor for clarification if a safe contact route is provided. A contributor may decline to answer. Do not include a phone number, email address or other contact information in the narrative if the submission channel provides a separate field for it.
25.The Council may use de-identified descriptions, aggregated counts and carefully selected cases in its analysis or public consultation material. It will avoid naming a member’s business and will not attribute a statement to a named member unless that member has clearly chosen to make it public. Anonymity cannot be guaranteed against every possible inference: a rare event, precise location or distinctive sequence may identify a business even when its name is removed. Please generalise those details if necessary.
26.The Council does not ask contributors to provide material they are legally prohibited from sharing or information that could compromise a claim, appeal, safety plan or investigation. If you are unsure whether a document is safe to share, describe the relevant step in your own words instead. Submission is voluntary, and withholding sensitive details will not make a report irrelevant.
27.Reports will not be treated as verified findings merely because they have been received. A report is evidence for examination, not a final determination that an event occurred exactly as described, that a law was breached, or that an organisation acted improperly. The Council will distinguish reported experience, documentary material, independently corroborated information, and questions that remain unresolved.
7. How reports contribute to the five-part pattern test
28.Every issue considered by Reseated proceeds through reports, a five-part pattern test, a draft fix, public consultation, an Assembly ballot, and letters to the CEOs who could adopt an approved standard. The five elements are Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. This call begins evidence collection; it does not prejudge the result of the test.
| Test element | Question for RS-001 | Evidence that may assist |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | How many distinct businesses report a relevant experience? | Separate, relevant reports from different businesses, with duplicate or repeated submissions identified rather than counted as new experiences. |
| Test element | Question for RS-001 | Evidence that may assist |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | How often does the described barrier or useful practice occur? | Dates, stages and recurrence across one event or over multiple events, while distinguishing repeated steps in one case from separate cases. |
| Test element | Question for RS-001 | Evidence that may assist |
|---|---|---|
| Consistency | Do accounts describe comparable processes or outcomes? | Similar descriptions of claim handling, funding access, continuity support or the consequences of delay, alongside material differences. |
| Test element | Question for RS-001 | Evidence that may assist |
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Does the issue appear across locations, business types or arrangements? | Broad country or regional information, business size and type, hazard, and the kind of organisation or process involved. |
| Test element | Question for RS-001 | Evidence that may assist |
|---|---|---|
| Corroboration | Is the account supported by evidence independent of the report itself? | Redacted correspondence, public process information, separate accounts, or other material that confirms a relevant detail without exposing a person. |
29.A report contributes to the evidence record, but its receipt does not automatically establish any one test. Several submissions about the same event may reveal repeated consequences, but they are not necessarily several independent business experiences. Conversely, a single well-documented account may be valuable without demonstrating a widespread pattern. The Council will record the nature and limits of evidence rather than treating raw totals as a conclusion.
30.Volume concerns the number of distinct relevant experiences reported, not the number of pages, documents or people who repeat the same account. Frequency concerns recurrence: for instance, whether a similar delay arose at one stage in multiple cases or repeatedly within a process. The Council will avoid counting several follow-up messages from one contributor as several independent reports.
31.Consistency does not mean every report must describe the same event or outcome. It asks whether a recognisable practice or barrier appears across accounts. Differences can be significant. A claim decision may be delayed because damage is difficult to assess in one case and because communication failed in another; these may be separate problems requiring different remedies rather than proof of one uniform cause.
32.Spread concerns the reach of a pattern, including differences in geography, business type, hazard and institutional setting. A submission should state only as much location detail as is safe. The Council will not infer that a practice is global simply because reports arrive from more than one country, and it will not use a country label as a substitute for understanding local conditions.
33.Corroboration may include material other than an owner’s account, but it does not require a contributor to reveal private information. An independently provided account, a redacted dated communication, or a published process description may support a particular point. Multiple copies of the same document do not make the evidence independent. The Council will note when corroboration is unavailable, including where a disaster destroyed records or a process took place orally.
34.At launch, the Resilience Council has 3 members from 3 countries and no RS reports from any country. Reseated overall has 20 members in 18 countries and 5 reports from 5 countries: 4 in Platform and 1 in Cashflow. These are the internal figures as of 10 February 2026. There is no RS report base at this date from which to claim a pattern, and the Council will not present these figures as evidence that a particular resilience problem has been established.
35.A report should therefore be specific enough to analyse, but need not be long or supported by formal documents. Please separate what you personally experienced from what you heard, what you infer, and what you would like changed. This distinction helps the Council assess all five parts of the test fairly.
8. Process and next steps
36.The Council will first collect and organise reports relevant to RS-001. It will examine whether the evidence supports Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration, and will identify gaps or competing explanations. A pattern review is an assessment of the evidence, not a judgment about the character or intent of any organisation.
37.If the issue meets the five-part test, the Council may prepare a draft fix for public consultation. The proposed three-part Reopen Standard is an initial question for evidence, not an adopted text. Any draft may be revised, narrowed, expanded or set aside in light of submissions. Consultation is a further opportunity to challenge definitions, deadlines, feasibility, unintended effects and the identity of organisations able to implement a proposal.
38.Following consultation, a proposal may be put to an Assembly ballot. If adopted, Reseated will send letters to the CEOs who could adopt it and track each seat as Proposed, Letter sent, Delivered, Replied, Signed or Empty chair. These labels describe the status of a seat. They are not endorsements or statements about a CEO unless a documented response supports that description.
39.No future consultation dates, ballot date, recipient list or outcome is set out in this launch call. Any later schedule will be communicated separately. The Council will not imply that a proposal has passed a test, been adopted, or received an answer before that event has occurred.
9. How to take part
40.Participation is open to a small-business owner or operator in any country. You do not need to be a Reseated member, belong to a particular industry, have insurance, or have experienced a declared disaster. A report may be submitted in any language. If you can, provide a short English summary of the main event and dates, but lack of an English summary should not prevent you from taking part.
41.Please use the available Reseated reporting route and identify the submission as RS-001, Reopen Standard. Include only information you consider safe to share. If you are submitting on behalf of another owner, make clear that you have permission and avoid including their identity unless they have chosen to make it public. If the available route cannot support your language or access needs, state what assistance would help without adding sensitive personal details to the report.
42.You may submit an account without answering every question and may explain that details are unknown, unavailable or unsafe to disclose. You may also submit evidence that shows a process worked well or that the proposed 30-day, 10-day or continuity-support measures are unsuitable. The Council seeks a reliable picture, not agreement with a predetermined solution.
43.The Resilience Council asks owners to describe what was needed to reopen, what happened when they sought help, what made the process work or fail, and what specific change could make recovery more dependable. A clear account can help the Assembly distinguish an isolated hardship from a recurring practice and can help shape a standard that is practical for businesses with limited time, staff and cash.
10. Closing statement
44.A business’s ability to reopen is part of its resilience, but the route from disruption to renewed trade is not the same for every owner. The Council will examine time, access, clarity and practical preparedness together, while preserving the distinction between reported experience, corroborated evidence and a proposal for change.
45.The Council invites evidence that is direct, careful and honest about its limits. Reports will be assessed as part of the five-part pattern test; no individual account will be treated as proof of a universal rule. The aim is to determine whether a common, workable expectation for claims, bridge funding and continuity support can be justified by the experiences of small businesses across different circumstances.
For the Resilience Council,
Gregorio Yap
Chair, Resilience Council
Tacloban, Philippines
Sources
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices of small and medium-sized enterprises.” 1
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Resilience of SMEs” report, including the Japan METI survey result cited in this note. 2
Notes and sources
Sources
This document has no standing until adopted under the Founders Charter. Reseated Councils is not affiliated with the United Nations.