Digital CoastROADMAP

Discover

Learn how communities are using the Roadmap and other risk and vulnerability assessment approaches and results to inform local planning and decision-making.

• Communities using the Roadmap Approach
• Communities using other risk and vulnerability assessment approaches
• Informing local planning and decision-making using assessment results

Communities Using the Roadmap Approach

Community Works Together to Strengthen Resilience in Mississippi
Local, state, and county leaders were brought together during a workshop to share stories about coping with natural and man-made hazards and to learn about helpful resources that are now available to strengthen resilience in their communities.

Engaging Communities in New Hampshire to Strengthen Resilience
Partners in coastal New Hampshire are using the Roadmap approach as a framework for conducting hazard risk and vulnerability assessments throughout communities. One New Hampshire rural estuarine community came together during a series of interactive meetings to build momentum towards action. For more information on this effort, view Building a Network of Champions in New Hampshire.

Helping Communities Plan For and Adapt to Coastal Risks and Vulnerabilities
Delaware County, Pennsylvania, municipalities knew they needed to consider hazards and climate change in their local decisions but were not sure how to go about accomplishing this task. A workshop held to apply the Roadmap process enabled municipalities to evaluate their strengths and vulnerabilities associated with local infrastructure, housing, ecosystems, and local populations. The municipalities are taking a regional approach to look for opportunities in their waterfront redevelopment and transportation planning to insert local hazard resilience goals.

If you are interested in learning more about these efforts, e-mail us at csc.roadmap@noaa.gov.

Identifying Relevant Risk and Vulnerability Data and Information
The Town of Southold, New York, is updating its comprehensive plan and wanted to take this opportunity to consider the impacts that hazards and climate change have on day-to-day operations and long-term decisions. To do this, the community is using what it learned from the Roadmap training to help identify relevant risk and vulnerability data and information that could be used to inform plan policies for lessening future vulnerabilities. For more information on this effort, view "Building Community Resilience on Long Island, New York."

The town has also been working to conserve natural resources that will make the community more resilient to hazard impacts. Read more about this effort.

Partners Build Capacity for Hazards Resilience in the Great Lakes
Many national and local partners, including Digital Coast partners, have come together to provide hazards planning resources to communities throughout the Great Lakes.

Visualizing Flood Hazards with Residents and Floodplain Managers in Mississippi
Local residents and floodplain managers in Biloxi, Mississippi, learned what their towns and neighborhoods could experience at various levels of sea level rise through potential flooding scenarios demonstrated using the Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts Viewer.

Communities Using Other Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Approaches

Coastal Community Resilience Index
The Coastal Community Resilience Index was piloted in several Gulf of Mexico communities to help these communities examine how prepared they were for disasters and identify where they might want to focus for a more detailed risk and vulnerability assessment. Find contact information for these pilot projects.

Hazard Mitigation Planning – Risk and Vulnerability Assessment
Most counties have hazard mitigation plans that include a risk and vulnerability assessment. This is a good starting point to see what assessment has already been completed. Visit your county’s emergency management or planning department websites to see a copy of the hazard mitigation plan. See a plan from Charleston County, South Carolina.

ICLEI’s Climate Resilient Communities Program
In Groton, Connecticut, ICLEI and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Long Island Sound Program held a climate adaptation workshop to engage stakeholders in developing climate adaptation strategies to help Connecticut and the Northeast become more resilient to climate impacts along the coast. Read more about this climate adaptation workshop.

Visit ICLEI’s website to learn more about its Climate Resilient Communities Program.

Vulnerability-Consequence Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) Process
In Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, the VCAPS process was used to help coastal managers and community members understand how climate change stressors influence existing management challenges, such as stormwater runoff, and to discuss options for dealing with these impacts. Learn more about this application of VCAPS.

Informing Local Planning and Decision-Making Using Assessment Results

Green Infrastructure Approaches
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Greenseams program is helping the city control excess stormwater runoff by using green infrastructure. The program is implementing porous pavement, rainwater catchments, bioswales, green roofs, and other strategies. Read more about Milwaukee’s stormwater management programs.

Habitat Protection and Conservation Planning

• The Nature Conservancy (TNC) assessed the climate change vulnerability of species as a critical first step toward including climate considerations in the next update to the Illinois Wildlife Action Plan (WAP). Scientists at TNC-Illinois used NatureServe’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index to rank the vulnerability of 163 species of greatest conservation need listed in Illinois’ WAP. With the assessment and recommended considerations now available, Illinois conservation practitioners have the information at hand to begin developing and deploying informed, site-specific conservation efforts and begin implementing adapted conservation practices under the umbrella of the WAP. Read more about Illinois’ species assessment effort.
• Maryland incorporated climate change impacts, specifically sea level rise, into its conservation priorities. Learn about the state’s initial considerations as it worked through this process and the geospatial best practices it incorporated to identify wetland conservation priorities for climate adaptation.
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and The Nature Conservancy are using sea level rise modeling trends and the Habitat Priority Planner to identify freshwater wetlands in coastal South Carolina to protect for future wildlife management. Read more about this project and view a recorded Digital Coast webinar on this project.

Integrating Hazard Mitigation and Community Plans

• Lee County, Florida’s Unified Local Hazard Mitigation Strategy has objectives tied directly to the towns’ comprehensive plan objectives and policies that help integrate the two plans. Both focus on prevention activities that reduce risk of life and damage to property from hazards, and both support natural resource protection that preserves or maintains natural areas, such as wetland systems, to ensure their long-term environmental, economic, hazard protection, and recreational values.
  Learn more about their efforts in the American Planning Association (APA) Newsletter: Zoning Practice – Practice Safe Growth Audits.
• The Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program conducted a region-wide vulnerability assessment and developed an adaptation plan for the City of Punta Gorda, Florida. The city is working to incorporate recommendations from the adaptation plan into its next comprehensive plan, including model ordinances created to guide local decision-making, as well as climate change indicators and a monitoring plan currently being developed. Learn more about this effort.

Making Decisions with Best Available Scientific Data
Although not a coastal example, this case study demonstrates how Missoula County, Montana, is moving forward in adaptation planning in spite of uncertainty in climate change projections. They focused on using best available science data and current observations to adapt to climate change and hazards. Read a quick overview of the project.

Policy Changes

• The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) updated the San Francisco Bay Plan to deal with the expected impacts of climate change in San Francisco Bay. The plan includes a vulnerability assessment, sea level rise scenarios, adaptation strategies, and methods used to create maps and sea level rise scenarios. The plan resulted in policy changes including
• Risk Assessments: Sea level rise risk assessments are required when planning shoreline areas or designing larger shoreline projects.
• Ecosystem Protection and Restoration: Where feasible, ecosystem restoration projects must be designed to provide space for marsh migration as sea level rises.

The next phase of this project is to work with local communities to assess and plan for their impacts from sea level rise and climate change. Learn more about these local assessment and planning activities.

• The town of Chatham, Massachusetts, is successfully preventing the construction of new homes in the floodplain as a result of a zoning bylaw that prohibits new residential units in the town’s mapped floodplains. A landmark 2005 case confirmed this authority when the highest court in Massachusetts ruled in favor of preventing residential or other high-risk development in hazardous areas. Read more about this case study.

Stormwater Management Planning
New York City is addressing climate change impacts on its stormwater systems and created a plan called Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan in an Urban Environment that includes

• Discussion of stormwater issues in the city
• Examples of urban adaptation and the use of existing infrastructure and land use to adapt to increased stormwater
• Practices for reducing stormwater, including costs of source controls
• Planning scenarios