When recovery time is the measure

Dear members,

May has been a month of moving from evidence toward decisions. For the Resilience Council, that work is still unfinished: RS-001, our proposed Reopen Standard, has passed four of the five parts of our pattern test. Corroboration remains pending. We should be encouraged by progress, but careful about what the evidence can and cannot yet support.

Across Reseated, the work is growing. As of 27 May, we have 759 members in 49 countries and 1,980 reports from 50 countries. The Resilience Council has 63 members in 35 countries and 26 reports from 18 countries. The reports describe disaster situations; the median amount at stake is approximately US$5,200. Fifteen resilience reports came in during the last 30 days. Those are not abstractions. They represent owners trying to work out what can be saved, what must be paid, and how soon they can open again.

What moved this month

On 5 May, Reseated opened its pledge programme for businesses. A pledge matters only if it becomes a practice that owners can recognize and rely on. That same standard should guide our own work: a proposal is not a result, and a letter is not a change in someone’s operating rules.

On 12 May, PL-001 passed the five-part pattern test. That is a Platform Council milestone, not a Resilience Council finding, but it is an important case of the process we have agreed to follow: examine volume, frequency, consistency, spread and corroboration before moving to a proposed fix. We need that discipline most when the underlying issue is urgent.

On 18 May, the Resilience Council wrote to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, offering Reseated’s days-to-reopen data as a contribution to the Sendai Framework review. The offer is a practical one: small-business recovery should be visible in disaster planning, not treated as an afterthought once emergency response ends.

On 19 May, the UK Late Payments Bill was introduced in the House of Lords. On 26 May, the Platform Council circulated its draft Fairness Standard. These are different policy tracks, but both speak to a shared reality: a small business can be placed under pressure by decisions made elsewhere, while having little time or cash to absorb the consequences.

What the resilience numbers show

Our 26 resilience reports come from 18 countries. The largest country counts so far are Japan and the Netherlands, with three each; Germany, Mexico, Spain and Nigeria have two each. The remaining reports are spread across other countries. The reported teams are varied: 42% are “just me,” 35% have two to nine people, and 23% have 10 to 49. This matters. A disaster plan designed for a larger organization may assume spare staff, spare cash or a dedicated operations team that a micro business simply does not have.

The median amount at stake, about US$5,200, gives one measure of exposure. It does not capture every cost: lost trading days, spoiled stock, damaged tools, delayed wages, or the time spent dealing with forms and calls. The UNDRR has reported that small and medium-sized enterprises bear roughly 75% of business disaster losses. It has also noted that disaster-risk reduction can reduce losses by up to a third.¹ These figures reinforce why prevention and recovery support belong in the same conversation.

A member story, with identifying details withheld

One account from our listening work describes a sole owner whose premises could not reopen immediately after flooding. The first problem was not a lack of determination; it was the order in which costs arrived. The owner needed to assess damage, keep essential bills from falling behind, and find a way to resume trading before customers drifted elsewhere. Insurance paperwork moved on its own timetable. The owner’s household and business expenses did not.

I am sharing the account without a name, business type or exact location. The point is not to turn one person’s experience into a universal claim. It is to show why the proposed standard asks for three things together: an insurance claim decision within 30 days; bridge funding within 10 days of a declared disaster; and continuity-planning support suitable for a micro business. A faster decision alone may not reopen a door. A plan alone cannot pay immediate bills. Recovery needs both.

We should also be honest about what we do not yet know. The evidence is not complete enough to say that every claim can be decided within the same period, or that every disaster calls for the same form of bridge funding. That is why RS-001 is still at four out of five tests. The final test is not a hurdle to wave away; it is where we check whether the proposed pattern is sufficiently supported.

What we learned, and what comes next

One lesson from this month is that “days to reopen” is a useful measure because it asks about the outcome owners care about: when can work resume? But the measure needs context. A business may reopen partially, operate from another location, or remain unable to trade even after a formal claim decision. We will keep asking what counts as reopening and what information members can reasonably provide without exposing their identity or business.

Another lesson is that preparedness must be usable. The UNDRR’s SME resilience report, drawing on a Japan METI survey, notes that 8% of prepared SMEs had not recovered sales, compared with 19% of unprepared

SMEs.² Preparation does not remove risk, but it can improve the chance of recovery. That supports our focus on continuity planning designed for small teams, rather than simply advising owners to create plans they have no time or help to implement.

Our next steps are set by the calendar. The Platform Fairness Standard consultation is scheduled to open on 2 June and run through 2 July. On 23 June, CF-001 is scheduled to pass through its pattern test. On 27 June, Reseated will mark Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day. For the Resilience Council, we will continue checking the missing corroboration for RS-001, develop the Reopen Map and continue the typhoon and flood readiness drive. We will not describe the standard as adopted before the evidence review and the Assembly process are complete.

Thank you to Keiko in Osaka, Marta in Rotterdam, Chinedu in Lagos and Liza in Tacloban for the care and time you have given this work. Thank you, too, to everyone who has sent a report, asked a difficult question or helped make our language more precise. Please keep sharing what happened, when it happened and what helped or delayed reopening. Specific, safely anonymized evidence is how we turn concern into a standard that can be tested.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. UNDRR, Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices of small and medium-sized enterprises
2. UNDRR, Resilience of SMEs report