U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

Heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States. As average global temperatures continue to rise, the threats of both extreme heat events and chronic heat are projected to increase.

Heat disproportionately affects marginalized residents and those who face systematic inequities such as workplace safety, housing quality, energy affordability, transportation reliability, and healthcare access. But planning can shape heat risk. Planners will be key practitioners in helping their communities achieve greater heat resiliency by proactively managing and mitigating heat across the many systems and sectors it affects.

PAS Report 600 provides holistic guidance to help practitioners increase urban heat resilience equitably in the communities they serve. It provides an in-depth overview of the contributors to urban heat and equity implications, and it lays out an urban heat resilience framework and collection of strategies to help planners mitigate and manage heat across a variety of plans, policies, and actions.

Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, requires that each Federal agency develop a Climate Action Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. This plan highlights the important role the Department of Commerce plays in advancing climate adaptation and resilience. The actions captured in this Plan, as well as the broader work of the Department to address the climate crisis, support the Department’s mission to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.

Sections in this report include:

• Why Is Climate Adaptation & Resilience Planning Important for the Department of Commerce?
• Efforts to Enhance Climate Literacy into the Management Workforce
• Climate Vulnerability Assessment
• Actions to Enhance Climate Adaptation and Resilience with Climate-Ready Sites and Facilities 
• Actions to Enhance Climate Adaptation and Resilience with Climate-Ready Products and Services
• Priority Climate Adaptation and Resilience Actions

Planning for a Changing Climate guides NPS planners and managers in developing robust climate change adaptation strategies to better protect park resources and assets today and for future generations. The guide derives from Climate-Smart Conservation, the product of an interagency and nongovernmental organization partnership led by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Planning for a Changing Climate incorporates scenario planning concepts in the climate-smart framework to advance adaptation planning in the National Park Service

This guidance aims to enhance the capacity of health care facilities to protect and improve the health of their target communities in an unstable and changing climate. The document also intends to empower health care facilities to be environmentally sustainable, by optimizing the use of their resources and minimizing the release of waste into the environment. Climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities contribute to high quality of care and accessibility of services, and by helping reduce facility costs also ensure better affordability. 

This document aims to:

• Guide professionals working in health care settings to understand and effectively prepare for the additional health risks posed by climate change.
• Monitor, anticipate, manage and adapt to the health risks associated with climate change.
• Guide health care facility officials to work with health determining sectors (including water and sanitation, energy, transportation, food, urban planning, environment) to prepare for additional health risks posed by climate change through a resilience approach, and to promote environmentally sustainable practices in providing these services.
• Provide tools to assist health care facility officials assess their resilience to climate change threats, and their environmental sustainability based upon the appropriate use of resources (in particular water and energy and sustainable procurement), and release of hazards (biological, chemical, radiological), to their surrounding environment.
• Promote actions to ensure that health care facilities are constantly and increasingly strengthened and continue to be efficient and responsive to improve health and contribute to reducing inequities and vulnerability within their local settings.

A growing number of local governments are taking steps toward climate adaptation, mostly through the development of climate adaptation plans. However, the rate and pace of adaptation action has significantly lagged behind planning, especially in mid- and small-sized municipalities where resources are often limited and local politics may further delay action. This report describes how to use economics to build support for climate adaptation. Using case studies from cities large and small, it highlights how to effectively use economic data and methods, provides eight types of economic analyses for climate adaptation, and explains how to clearly communicate economic data to different audiences.

The Beloved Community is a vision for our future where all people share equally in the wealth and bounty of the earth, where we protect its abundance, diversity, and beauty for future generations. In this vision of liberation, racism, exploitation, and domination are replaced by democracy, cooperation, interdependence, and love. To get there, we pursue transformative, systems-change solutions. What do we mean by this? The root causes of the problems our communities face—like climate change, racism, and economic inequality—are all deeply connected. Since the problems are connected, so are the solutions. The purpose of this toolkit is to put us on the path toward achieving this vision. Through the context of building equity and resilience into climate adaptation planning, we introduce strategies to transform our communities and, by extension, society. Our ultimate goal is to create lasting and systemic change. At the same time, we recognize the urgency of the issues our communities face and the need to take action now. That is why we pursue change at every scale—from policy changes to community-based projects—to institute the transformative change we need to uphold our vision of the beloved community.

This report offers the first national assessment of the scope and consequences of urban flooding in the United States. Researchers analyzed available data concerning urban flooding, surveyed municipal flood and stormwater managers, and met with professionals whose disciplines intersect with urban flooding at the local, state, and national level. The research team's findings affirm that urban flooding is a national and significant source of economic loss, social disruption, and housing inequality. This report presents the full results of the study, addresses governance issues that affect urban flood risk reduction, examines critical challenges, and offers recommendations for actions.