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Community Resilience Planning: A Decision-Making Framework for Coastal Communities
Citation:
Dyson, B., J. Carriger, T. Newcomer Johnson, R. Moura, T. Richardson, AND Timothy J. Canfield. Community Resilience Planning: A Decision-Making Framework for Coastal Communities. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-19/066, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
The following report provides information and guidance on the application of tools and decision processes developed by NRMRL and ORD supporting communities faced with making risk-based decisions fostering community health and resilience to environmental challenges.
Description:
One of the most pervasive challenges facing coastal communities is sea level rise (SLR), both in its geographical extent and potential for adverse social, economic, and environmental impact. Local flooding results in property damage and disruptions to daily life. Likewise, regional problems, such as coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion, reduced ecosystem services and tourism may be exacerbated. As coastal communities continue to face growing risks from SLR and related coastal hazards, additional investments in resilience planning to protect current and future populations will be necessary to address these challenges. This report describes a structured decision-making process with the US EPA webtool DASEES (Decision Analysis for a Sustainable Environment, Economy, and Society) that facilitated developing a shared vision for coastal community resilience planning across three levels of governance/administration in the southeast Florida region. DASEES was used to facilitate two workshops with residents of the coastal community of Dania Beach, FL, environmental planners from Broward County, FL, and the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact with the aim to identify objectives for coastal decision-making that can inform the development of action plans promoting resilience. It is anticipated that the results obtained from the workshops can be extended to provide a continuing path via DASEES for estimating action consequence assessments, implementation planning and serve as an example process to follow for other communities facing similar challenges. The work described in this report can be used to construct community objectives and find common ground of support with outside agencies and jurisdictions. Available USEPA tools and resources such as DASEES may help support these endeavors in the future.