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ASFPM and APA awarded $1.05 million grant

NOAA Grant Will Bring
Resiliency Efforts into Capital Improvement Planning
The Association of
State Floodplain Managers and American
Planning Association will work together to develop new national planning
guidelines for coastal resiliency, thanks to a $1,054,543 Regional Coastal
Resilience Grant Award from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
Office for Coastal Management.

Trillions of dollars of local infrastructure investments are
needed in communities in the next several decades. Planning and constructing
capital improvements can be done in such a way that they make coastal
communities more resilient from the impacts of climate change–extreme weather
events, climate hazards and changing ocean conditions such as sea level rise.

However, very little current capital improvement planning,
either a project-by-project basis or multi-year effort, accounts for climate
change data or resiliency. This is a very new approach and techniques are
currently unknown, or are just starting to develop. This grant will help
identify and advance the best techniques for incorporating long-term resiliency
efforts into capital improvement planning.

ASFPM Executive Director Chad Berginnis said, “This project
will mainstream techniques for building in coastal resiliency. We know there
are techniques being tested and used in isolation around this country, but very
few are known and widely available to engineers, planners and floodplain
managers. So this project will identify, test and present those techniques to
the practitioner community.”

“It is a new era for hazard mitigation efforts by combining
resiliency efforts into capital improvement planning efforts,” said James C. Schwab,
manager of APA’s Hazards Planning Center. “This approach will maximize economic
benefits and enhance the safety of the community. It will also push the
boundaries for how communities will be able to use available federal data to
make informed decisions.”

“Building Coastal Resilience through Capital Improvement
Planning: Guidance for Practitioners” is a three-year project. The first phase
of the project will explore techniques for incorporating climate change into
capital improvement planning efforts. The second phase will test the techniques
among the two regional pilot program partners – the city of Toledo and Lucas
County, Ohio; and Chatham County and Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan
Planning Commission. The regional partners represent two different types of
coastal communities. This will ensure the best techniques identified will be
applicable to all coastal communities.

APA and ASFPM are long-standing partners of the NOAA Digital Coast program.
This grant will further inform professional planners about the coastal data and
tools available and enhance use. Other Digital Coast partners will play a role
in advising the project.

For more information on the other projects awarded 2015
Coastal Resiliency Grants, visit: https://coast.noaa.gov/resilience-grant/projects/

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