Browsing by Subject "Climate resilience"

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Open Access
A Climate Change Vulnerability and Risk Assessment for the City of Atlanta, Georgia
(2010-04-28T18:23:36Z) Morsch, Amy
The Southeastern United States will experience several impacts from climate change over the coming decades, including average temperature increases of several degrees, more frequent droughts, and heavier rain and flood events. More intense weather will place stress on Atlanta’s infrastructure, affect planning decisions, and increase demands for already scarce natural and financial resources. The impacts will affect the health of Atlantans and test the strength of the local and regional economy. Understanding the future climate and preparing now will help ensure that the city remains an economically viable, healthy, and enjoyable place to live and work. Twenty-four planning areas in nine sectors that the city can influence were evaluated to determine their vulnerability and risk with regard to climate change. The assessments were designed using guidance from ICLEI’s Adaptation Guidebook and involved dozens of expert interviews, analysis of city reports, and a comprehensive literature review. The results show that air quality, water quality, and energy assurance are the most vulnerable, at-risk planning areas in the City of Atlanta. These areas are crucial to the health of citizens and the economic viability of the city. Increasing their resiliency will require significant coordination with all levels of government and the private sector. Failure to properly prepare these planning areas for climate change could result in substantial costs to the city. Several additional planning areas show significant vulnerability and risk. These include: electricity production and demand, affordable housing, disaster response, heat relief, stormwater management, urban forest management, road and bridge maintenance, and air transport. Analysis of vulnerability and risk by sector resulted in similar findings. The sectors of energy, water, and health will be most impacted by climate change over the coming decades. Improving the resiliency of these sectors may be most effectively achieved through measures that focus on strengthening sectors like ecology, transportation, and land use and development. This study identified recurring barriers that lower the city’s adaptive capacity. Lack of program funding and knowledge of climate change - and the impacts - were pervasive. Short planning horizons and planning efforts based on historical data (or future projections that ignore climate change) are also common and reduce Atlanta’s resiliency. Coordination between several planning areas is strong, but could be increased in others such as heat relief and urban planning. Narrow government mandates, like the flood plain ordinance, can also limit progress towards climate resiliency. In other cases, strict mandates like those stemming from the CSO Consent Decree have been instrumental to project success. The results of this project are intended to inform the next phase of adaptation planning. This involves setting high-level goals for climate resiliency and outlining the adaptation tactics to achieve them. It is recommended that a diverse, knowledgeable committee of local decision makers and stakeholders be tasked with this challenge. A robust adaptation strategy will place Atlanta in the company of other climate proactive cities that have already created comprehensive adaptation plans, like New York City and Chicago.
Open Access
Building Social Equity into Floodplain Buyouts
(2021-04-30) Lipuma, Sarah
Increasingly frequent flood events have generated greater attention to voluntary floodplain buyouts, a tool to mitigate flood hazards by permanently moving people and properties out of harm’s way. While buyouts hold the promise of reducing flood risk by allowing the land to be used to store stormwater, they can also repeat inequitable practices of the past that have displaced vulnerable communities. Through a literature review, this study discusses the knowledge to date at the nexus between flood risk, social equity, and buyouts. The study uses geospatial tools to identify possible parcels for buyouts in a North Carolina town by focusing on the level of flood risk and proximity to natural areas. The resulting buyout scenarios are compared using a social vulnerability index and physical risk factors. The study concludes with recommendations to land use planners and floodplain managers at the state level for buyout decision-making. Incorporating social vulnerability information into buyout criteria will be valuable to administrators of buyout programs to identify the most at-risk populations, prioritize equity, and direct government funding to buyouts that benefit the entire community.
Open Access
Communicating Climate Change in Eastern North Carolina: Rural Attitudes on Extreme Weather and Climate Resilience
(2020-04-24) Rowe, Elizabeth
Eastern North Carolina has historically experienced numerous hurricanes, however, Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018 heralded a new wave of climate-related extreme weather events. In partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, this project aims to understand if and how the attitudes of residents of rural Eastern North Carolina have been influenced by extreme weather, changing weather patterns, and climate change following the double hits of Hurricanes Matthew and Florence. Through a series of semi-structured interviews throughout the Coastal Plain, this project found that while communities may be reticent to support climate mitigation policies, they were eager for solutions that would enable their communities to adapt to these climatic changes. This project provides insights into how to engage with these rural communities on the issue of climate change and extreme weather.
Open Access
Designing Collaborative Workshops for Rural Churches and Policy-Makers
(2023-04-27) Barnes, Sarah; Alexander, Langston
Rural coastal communities in the Southeastern United States face a worsening combination of natural hazards impacting social services, economies, infrastructure, and local cultures. Despite the role faith communities play in the well-being of rural areas, they have historically been left out of policy deliberations on climate resilience and adaptation. Collaborative learning workshops offer a practical framework to bridge the gap between decision makers and faith communities. To investigate best practices in planning and facilitating workshops, we conducted interviews with community climate adaptation practitioners and formed a literature review using academic sources, guides, and case studies on collaborative learning workshops. Our findings highlight the importance of building long-term collaborative relationships founded on trust and respect. While there is no universal solution to building local resilience to climate change, developing avenues of communication and collective understanding can help communities take steps in addressing climate impacts.
Open Access
Evaluating Viability of Community Solar Microgrids for Resilience in Puerto Rico
(2019-04-26) Deng, Simeng; Hansen, Asger Victor; Hiltbrand, Galen; Maddex, Sean; Sinclair Lecaros, Santiago
Hurricane Maria, which hit the Caribbean two weeks after Hurricane Irma in September 2017, caused the largest electricity blackout in U.S. history. After the hurricanes, Toro Negro, a rural community nestled into the mountains of Puerto Rico went without electricity for a staggering 8 months. This experience led the community to build and manage Puerto Rico’s first fully operational community solar microgrid to gain electricity reliability and resilience. The aim of this project is to develop an effective management strategy for community solar microgrid systems in Puerto Rico. Our team established a price rate at which the residents of Toro Negro can pay for their electricity and an operations and maintenance plan to ensure the microgrid remains economically feasible for the lifetime of the system. Additionally, we have established a common governance strategy and policy recommendations for microgrids in Puerto Rico. Our project can serve as a blueprint for other communities looking to transition to clean energy and increase storm resiliency. 
Open Access
Improving Access of Climate Information for Communities Vulnerable to Drought in California
(2024-04-24) Bliska, Hanna
State governments are recognizing the unequal impacts of natural hazards across communities and are mobilizing to focus resilience-building efforts in the communities that need it most. In California, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research is interested in assessing community vulnerability to drought in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV), a highly-productive agricultural region home to many diverse and disadvantaged communities. In the SJV, climate change, wetland loss, and intense water demand have exacerbated natural drought cycles. In this project, I used geospatial analysis to develop two new indices to spatially identify SJV communities vulnerable to drought. I also conducted nine interviews with practitioners involved in drought resilience work in the SJV to learn about 1) the types of sources they use to obtain climate information for drought planning, and 2) the recommendations they have for the State to improve information-sharing. I found that there are ample opportunities for the State to improve the usability and applicability of State resources for local practitioners working to build resilience to drought.
Open Access
Preparation is the Key to Success: Strategies for Pre-Emptive Managed Retreat in Vulnerable Coastal Municipalities
(2024-04-26) Mitchell, Elizabeth
Introduction As climate change increasingly affects communities, vulnerable coastal municipalities are grappling with more severe and frequent flooding and stronger storms. Coastal communities must consider ways to adapt to climate change effects by implementing planning tools that make communities more resilient. One planning tool, managed retreat, moves people and property out of harm’s way through strategies like government-facilitated buyouts and acquisitions and economic- and zoning-based techniques like rolling easements and transfer of development rights. Managed retreat in the United States has traditionally been implemented after Presidentially Declared Disasters, leveraging post-disaster federal funding to move people out of the most severely damaged properties in affected communities. However, communities are increasingly considering future flood risk and are planning pre-emptive, or pre-disaster, managed retreat programs. This project defines pre-emptive managed retreat programs as ones proactively planning for or addressing natural hazards exposure that do not rely on post-disaster federal funding to finance the programs. Because pre-emptive managed retreat programs are still relatively rare, studying programs that have already been planned or implemented can provide insights into the retreat strategies communities are using, how communities are overcoming program hurdles, and information about people’s attitudes towards climate change-related hazards and retreat. This project aims to understand the pre-emptive managed retreat strategies that coastal communities in the eastern United States are using, as well as the challenges these early adopters have faced. It also aims to understand how communities are financing or planning to finance pre-emptive retreat because these programs are very expensive and there is limited federal funding for pre-disaster retreat. The project also explores the ways government leaders have engaged with community members and how community engagement shaped the program development process. Finally, this project uncovers information about program implementation timelines and the ways communities are bridging the gap between planning and implementation. Methods I addressed my research questions through the case study analysis of six coastal communities in the eastern United States that are planning for or implementing pre-emptive managed retreat programs. I identified pre-emptive managed retreat programs in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Florida to get geographic representation along the coast, and focused on two programs in each state for inter- and intra-state comparison. I started by analyzing planning documents available online which built my baseline knowledge about each program and helped me identify gaps in that knowledge. I next conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with local government leaders which helped me gain additional information to answer the questions I identified during the plan analysis process. Finally, I analyzed the interview transcripts by conducting a theme analysis to better understand details about the programs’ financing, community engagement, and implementation. Results In addition to program-specific details about the retreat strategies communities are using, and financing, community engagement, and implementation details for each program, I identified common themes among municipalities. First, financing is a barrier to implementation. Municipal budgets are not large enough to fund large-scale retreat programs. Particularly because the real estate market is extremely hot across the country, potential participants can easily sell their homes on the regular market. Communities are working to get funding from state and federal sources, which may help fill the funding gap. Additionally, pre-emptive retreat is generally viewed as a future necessity. Pre-emptive retreat is seen as a fork in the road that communities might need to take in the future rather than a pressing current reality. In some cases, this future planning approach reflects the community’s view that managed retreat will be necessary for future generations of homeowners, not the current homeowners in the municipality. Even if communities wait to implement these programs, planning for managed retreat in the near term allows community leaders to be prepared when residents need to retreat and gives leaders time to discuss the subject of retreat with residents through continued engagement efforts. Community engagement will be particularly important during the years before program implementation because no community plans to use eminent domain. All near-term programs will be voluntary, which will require government leaders to get community buy-in, especially for programs where specific neighborhoods are planned for retreat. There is little-to-no coordination among communities. This is a missed opportunity for programs to avoid missteps and share ideas and resources that might improve the retreat process. Professional networks may be an appropriate and convenient forum for these conversations, and governments may also consider integrating engagement with other program leaders into the community engagement process during program planning. Finally, the policy entrepreneurs I spoke with inspired me with their dedication to improving community resilience, viewing retreat not as a failure but as an opportunity to build a stronger community. Despite the challenges these leaders face in planning and implementing pre-emptive retreat programs, they are determined to equip their communities for future hazards and mitigate future climate risk through retreat. This project broadens research on managed retreat programs by focusing on pre-emptive retreat, which is relatively uncommon compared to post-disaster retreat. Understanding the strategies communities are using to pre-emptively plan for retreat and how these communities are addressing funding, community engagement, and implementation challenges can help build institutional knowledge about pre-emptive managed retreat among the academic community and practitioners. Pre-emptive managed retreat allows communities to plan for and implement retreat programs outside a post-disaster scenario, which can move people and property out of harm’s way before the next disaster. Studying six case study communities that have planned or implemented pre-emptive managed retreat programs demonstrated the types of retreat strategies communities are considering, details about how communities can overcome retreat challenges, and common themes that are present among the cases. These cases demonstrate that, despite the challenges, pre-emptive retreat program planning is a viable and meaningful step in adaptation planning and can help communities prepare for future climate change effects.