U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

The objective of this training is to enable National Weather Service field staff to identify appropriate sources of climate data, products, and information. This is the first of six Professional Competency Units (PCU) in the National Weather Service Climate Services Professional Development Series. Note that there is a second component of this PCU that includes an in-person Operational Climate Services Residence Training.

This course will help to enhance community leaders' understanding of natural disasters, risk assessment in the context of disaster management, prevailing emergency management procedures and operations, and the different vulnerability factors that exist within their local community. The course will also provide participants with an understanding of the necessary plans and tools needed in planning for natural disasters and will help them to better understand and identify the personnel best equipped to address response and recovery requirements in the case of an actual disaster. The goal of this course is to provide community leaders with information on natural hazards and disasters, improve community disaster preparedness, and strengthen community partnerships.

Flooding hazards can threaten any community in any location in the United States. Flooding can occur over a period of weeks or days, or minutes, thus this course focuses the identification and assessment of hazards due to flooding to enable proper preparedness and response. As flooding is one of the top meteorological killers in the United States, and poses particular hazards to emergency responders, this introduction to recognizing flooding threats is essential for developing safe communities. Flooding Hazards: Science and Preparedness is an awareness-level, eight-hour course that addresses the current science of the causes of floods (both meteorological and otherwise), flood forecasting, flood risk assessment, and best practices for preparation and mitigation for both short- and long-fuse flooding events. Key concepts and discussion topics will be reinforced with facilitator-led group activities that utilize real-world flood scenarios. These activities will illustrate the diverse challenges and complexities that can occur during actual flood events while building participants' experience and confidence in anticipating, heeding warnings, and responding to floods.

This awareness-level, four-hour course provides participants with a general understanding of the risks associated with natural hazards and disasters, introduces methods of assessing that risk to vulnerable small businesses, and describes the business continuity planning process to help small businesses prepare for, plan for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from any natural hazard or disaster that may occur. Modules include instruction on identifying hazards to business operations through risk assessment and identifying financial disaster assistance programs and business interruption insurance programs.

This course demonstrates how to integrate risk and community-based collaborative strategies into plans and programs and introduces tools that help communities assess individual risks and vulnerabilities, as well as strategies, to become more resilient and better prepared for natural disasters. The one-day training course provides state and local government agency staff and other stakeholder groups with background on natural hazards. In addition, the course will guide an approach to (1) assess community resilience, and (2) develop next steps for improved resilience. The course is designed for national implementation while allowing integration of local concerns through case studies and focused group exercises.

This one-day, awareness-level training course aims to increase the awareness of the hazards facing coastal communities and basic strategies to reduce the risk to those hazards. This course provides training on the basic science of, assessment of, and preparedness for natural hazards and risks that uniquely affect coastal communities. Examples of these hazards are short-term events such as high surf, storm surge, and tsunami inundation or long-term threats from sea level rise and coastal erosion.

This course will build on the first course of the series, Coastal Hazards Awareness, by supplementing the awareness knowledge with tools and skills for practical use. The one-day, performance-level training course provides training on available tools for the assessment and planning for natural hazards and vulnerabilities that uniquely affect coastal communities. Examples of these hazards include short-term events such as high surf, storm surge, and tsunami inundation or long-term threats from sea level rise and coastal erosion. The goal of this course is to enable participants to identify methods and considerations for assessing hazards and vulnerabilities of coastal communities, compare and select sources and methods for collecting coastal hazard and vulnerability data, and utilize available web-based tools to conduct a preliminary hazard and vulnerability assessment in their community.

Building awareness of future climate hazards and impacts that the emergency services sector may face is very important. This course helps emergency services and the community better prepare for the climate adaptations necessary and systems vulnerabilities that may occur from hazard impacts. Participants will be able to describe the principles of climate adaptation planning for emergency management and existing first response processes and will be able to discuss the impact of weather on critical infrastructure and key resources while explaining the concurrent effects of climate change on those impacts. Participants will also gain an understanding of how to identify and apply adaptation strategies to address local emergency services sector vulnerabilities. The course is also designed to provide opportunities for participants to learn about various resources that can be used to implement local climate adaptation strategies in their communities. The goal of this course is to prepare the community and the emergency services sector for the climate adaptations and systems vulnerabilities that might occur from hazard impacts and to enhance awareness to future climate hazards and impacts that the emergency services sector may face.

This course presents the tsunami hazard, current hazard assessment tools and products, tsunami warning and dissemination of systems, and effective community response and tsunami risk-reduction strategies. The course is designed to enhance the participants’ abilities to support their organizational preparedness and response efforts. At the conclusion of the course, a scenario-based group activity challenges participants to identify effective actions that help reduce the impacts of a tsunami hazard in their community. This is an awareness-level course that provides a basic understanding of tsunamis, hazard assessment, warning and dissemination, and community response strategies to effectively reduce tsunami risk. The goal of this course is to enhance the participants' abilities to support their organizational preparedness and response efforts.

This course provides a basic understanding of hurricane science, forecasting, warning, and preparedness to help emergency managers, responders, government administrators, and community members make better, more informed decisions in hurricane planning and preparedness. The course enhances the ability of participants to identify and describe the conditions of tropical cyclone formation, provide official watch and warning definitions, and to make recommendations in preparation for a hurricane and the associated hazards such as high winds, heavy rain, and storm surge. The goal of this course is to provide participants with the basics of hurricane science, forecasting, warning, and preparedness.