U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

There was a time not long ago when disasters would strike one at a time, and communities would have time to recover and rebuild. Today, however, there is a new normal where disasters most do not occur as isolated events and instead seem to pile on one another. They often unleash new devastation on a community before it has had a chance to recover from the prior disaster. This report, developed by National Academies' Resilient America Program's Committee on Hazard Mitigation and Resilience Applied Research Topics summarizes three applied research approaches in hazard mitigation and resilience field and provides four foundational themes to consider throughout research efforts.

The four foundational themes of future research identified include:

1. compounding and cascading disasters are the new normal
2. legacy conditions need to be assessed, evaluated, and addressed
3. researchers need to practice codesign with communities, starting with pain points and impacts and working backward to solutions
4. relentless resilience, or the ability to function throughout a series of disruptive events, is critical for a future marked by compounding and cascading events.

This is the second of two consensus study reports developed to assist FEMA in reducing the immense human and financial toll of disasters caused by natural hazards and other large-scale emergencies.

Click here to view a summary and key findings from this report >>

This Drought Guide, developed through the interagency National Drought Resilience Partnership, can be used to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of drought on infrastructure services. This resource directs users to the National Integrated Drought Information System (drought.gov) and other agencies’ information and decision tools.

This is the FY22 edition of the U.S. Gllobal Change Research Program's annual report to Congress mandated by the the Global Change Research Act. The report provides an overview of the Program’s progress in delivering on its strategic goals as well as a summary of agency expenditures under USGCRP’s budget crosscut.

The Sea Level Rise Technical Report provides the most up-to-date sea level rise projections available for all U.S. states and territories; decision-makers will look to it for information.

This multi-agency effort, representing the first update since 2017, offers projections out to the year 2150 and information to help communities assess potential changes in average tide heights and height-specific threshold frequencies as they strive to adapt to sea level rise.

Local communities are already experiencing dire effects caused by climate change that are expected to increase in frequency, intensity, duration, and type. Building and sustaining local capacities for climate resilience requires both resilient physical and social infrastructure systems and inclusive, resilient communities. This report, developed by the National Academies’ Resilient America Program’s Committee on Applied Research Topics for Hazard Mitigation and Resilience, provides guidance for active and ongoing efforts to move science and data into action and to enable and empower applied research that will strengthen capacities for hazard mitigation and resilience in communities, across the nation, and around the world.

Climate change affects all Americans—regardless of socioeconomic status—and many impacts are projected to worsen. But individuals will not equally experience these changes. This report  improves our understanding of the degree to which four socially vulnerable populations—defined based on income, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and age—may be more exposed to the highest impacts of climate change. Understanding the comparative risks to vulnerable populations is critical for developing effective and equitable strategies for responding to climate change.

This collection of leading practices in climate adaptation covers a suite of climate adaptation actions and is intended to broadly promote collaborative learning. Each practice in the collection is explained and supported by concrete examples. These practices are drawn from WUCA work products and WUCA members' experiences, and, when possible, connected to relevant resources and related efforts. Most of these practices are appropriate for water utilities of any size, as well as other sectors interested in climate adaptation.

The current practices and where they are placed within the five essential climate adaptation action areas:

• Engage
• Understand
• Plan
• Implement
• Sustain

It is important to note that these action areas and leading practices are not prioritized. Instead, the most useful practices depend on the individual organization's needs and priorities.

Over the course of January to March 2021, Climate XChange and Fairmount-Indigo CDC Collaborative engaged in conversations with frontline community leaders across Massachusetts. These discussions sought to understand the challenges they see in their communities, comprehend their long-term vision for solutions, gather their priorities for how investments should be spent, and identify ways to make the benefits of investments accessible to all. The researchers talked with individuals from organizations working in communities of color and low-income communities, labor unions, women-led organizations, local colleges, and organizations representing communities affected by sea level rise. This report presents key recommendations that represent the qualities and values that every investment package moving forward should exhibit. 

The central recommendation of this report, submitted to the National Climate Task Force, is that the pursuit of a decade-long national conservation effort be faithful to eight core principles. These principles—which include a commitment to collaboration, support for voluntary and locally led conservation, and honoring of Tribal sovereignty and private property rights—are essential ingredients to building and maintaining broad support, enthusiasm, and trust for this effort. These principles are also indispensable to achieving durable outcomes that meaningfully improve the lives of Americans.

In 2020, New York City's Mayor’s Office of Resiliency initiated an engagement process, called the Climate Knowledge Exchange, to align research with climate resiliency and adaptation needs. This report is the first in an annual series that will maintain a public agenda for climate research in NYC. The report communicates NYC’s research needs to external partners, including academic scientists, federal researchers, philanthropic foundations, and community organizations. This in turn will catalyze new and creative partnerships to develop credible and actionable research products that address NYC’s most pressing climate challenges. The report includes the engagement methodology and survey text used with various agencies.

This Guide is written for practitioners already using or wanting to use future climate information in their work, but who are not familiar with the underlying assumptions and choices surrounding climate data. Here, we introduce the climate model scenarios that are used to “drive” climate models forward in time. These scenarios are a combination of socioeconomic and climate forcing pathways. We summarize differences between these scenarios for the Great Lakes region to show users how their choice of model scenario affects future temperature and precipitation projections.

To plan for future sea level rise, Miami-Dade County relies on the 2019 Unified Sea Level Rise Projection for Southeast Florida developed by the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. These projections are revised every five years to ensure they reflect the best available science. Based on these consensus projections, they expect sea levels to be approximately two feet higher 40 years from 2019 levels and continue rising beyond that.

Electric power is essential for the lives and livelihoods of all Americans, and the need for electricity that is safe, clean, affordable, and reliable will only grow in the decades to come. At the request of Congress and the Department of Energy, a committee of experts convened to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the U.S. grid and how it might evolve in response to advances in new energy technologies, changes in demand, and future innovation. This book presents an extensive set of policy and funding recommendations aimed at modernizing the U.S. electric system, addressing technology development, operations, grid architectures, and business practices, as well as ways to make the electricity system safe, secure, sustainable, equitable, and resilient.

This report aims to build the capacity of organizations to serve as catalysts in supporting members of their communities stepping into leadership roles, as well as engaging them meaningfully in defining the scope of local climate change risks and impacts and formulating and implementing equitable solutions alongside key partners. This guide was developed using qualitative data collected through a series of interviews with experts from around the country who are designing, managing, and implementing community-based leadership development programs. Although not all of these programs directly address climate change and environmental justice, this collection of diverse programming illustrates the broad ways in which communities address leadership development and grassroots engagement in local decision making. This tool provides a comprehensive picture of training and capacity-building theory and practice, and showcases programs that are diverse in content, audience, geography, outcome, and practice.

Hotter weather, stronger typhoons, coral reef death, and physical and mental health risks are among the major challenges detailed in this report on climate change in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Threatened resources include high-value coastal infrastructure and the millions of dollars that ocean ecosystems add to the CNMI economy annually. This report provides guidance for decision makers seeking to better understand the implications of climate variability and change for CNMI and its communities and identifies the additional information and research needed to support responses that enhance resilience and help CNMI to withstand the changes to come.

This report highlights the equity implications of sea level rise in the first nationwide assessment of risk to the country’s affordable housing supply. As climate change causes sea levels to rise, the number of affordable housing units at risk of coastal flooding is projected to more than triple to nearly 25,000 nationwide over the next 30 years.

The 2020 State Climate Strategy informs policymaking on how Nevada will achieve the ambitious targets established by SB 254 and provides an integrated framework for evaluating climate policies that make sense for Nevada. This will optimize effectiveness of each given policy and therefore maximize the benefits for all Nevadans. By taking a smart, strategic approach to addressing climate change in Nevada, the state can fully capture the economic benefits of clean technologies and lead the way in the neighboring Western states.