Tag Archives | adaptation & mitigation

Best Practices for Coastal Louisiana Manual

The Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX) and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) recently released the Best Practices Manual for Development in Coastal Louisiana website. What’s novel about this site is that it provides strategies for creating sustainable and resilient coastal communities based on “geotypes” (pick from chenier plain, alluvium, upper riverbanks, middle riverbanks, […]

New Webinar: The Front Lines of Climate Change

Next Wednesday (November 30th) at 2PM CST the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium will be hosting what sounds like an interesting webinar on how climate change is impacting Bangladesh (for those who don’t know, that nation is often cited as one of the countries most susceptible to negative climate change impacts). The talk will be given […]

Army Corps of Engineers Releases Updated Sea Level Rise Procedures

The Army Corps of Engineers has updated its circular (“Sea-Level Change Considerations For Civil Works Programs“) spelling out how it will approach designing its projects to address sea level rise. If your community has any Corps projects, you’ll definitely want to have a quick skim (it’s shorter than it looks: most of the important stuff […]

How Easy Can Freeboard for an Existing Structure Be?

Pretty easy. A freeboard success story from FEMA: Gail Cunningham Coen of Westport wishes that people would realize how easy it is to elevate your flood-prone house, especially when the Long Island Sound is just feet from your front door. “We didn’t even take the pictures off the wall,” Coen said, referring to the elevation […]

City Folds Climate Change Adaptation into Hazard Mitigation Plan

“Hazard mitigation is very important and there’s a lot of value in looking at past events, but we know with climate change that we can’t use the past to project what the future will be like. For example, the flood that a community used to experience every 100 years may now be the 20-year flood.” […]

Video from Last Week’s Wind Retrofit Webinar

The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety has released a video of their webinar last week, “IBHS Fortified for Existing Homes and FEMA’s Wind Retrofit Guide.” The webinar covered the joint engineering guidance provided by the IBHS FORTIFIED for Existing Homes program and FEMA’s Wind Retrofit Guide, both of which were introduced in 2010 […]

FEMA Releases Updated Coastal Construction Manual

FEMA has updated their bible on construction in coastal areas, the Coastal Construction Manual. Like the bible, it’s no pamphlet: this version comes in at 253 pages and a hefty 33MB. But if you’re involved in any sort of construction in coastal areas (including deciding where it should happen), you already know that you need […]

FEMA Releases First Edition of the National Preparedness Goal

From a FEMA press-release: We are pleased to announce the release of the first edition of the National Preparedness Goal, which is available for download at http://www.fema.gov/PPD8. The National Preparedness Goal is the first deliverable called for by Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8 and was signed by the Secretary of Homeland Security on September 23, […]

Need an Example? Check Out this Climate Change Adaptation Plan

Not sure how to get started on a climate change adaptation plan? Have a look at what the San Francisco Bay area has drafted with their new “Climate Change Hits Home” report. The plan includes: Anticipated regional impacts Vulnerable areas and adaptation strategies (includes public safety and health, transportation, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water management, […]