Community Resiliency
Resiliency in the environmental realm is generally understood as the ability of communities and the natural environment to absorb and recover from storms, flooding, erosion and other extreme conditions. Often societal and economic resiliency and recovery are tied to environmental resilience.
The Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Partnership (CHNEP) is working on enhancing environmental and community resilience in our program area. This involves using win-win solutions that maintain flood protection and stabilized shorelines in our communities, while enhancing our environmental assets such as our fisheries and water quality. View CHNEP's Resolution to learn more about how we envision working collaboratively to support increasing community resiliency.
View information about the Responding to Rising Waters in Southwest Florida Webinar to learn more about how changes in seawater levels could impact South Florida. For more info, please review previous Summit presentations.
CHNEP
CHNEP
CHNEP
Resiliency Planning
The old adage of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is especially true when it comes to resiliency. Taking measures to identify hazards, assess vulnerability and risks, investigate options, and plan and implement actions before a catastrophe occurs avoids having to pay for even more expensive damages and remedial actions later.
The CHNEP is working on enhancing environmental and community resilience in our program area. This involves using win-win solutions that maintain flood protection and stabilized shorelines in our communities, while enhancing our environmental assets such as our fisheries and water quality.
Vulnerability Assessment & Adaptation Action Area Plans
The CHNEP plays a vital role in enhancing community resiliency by bringing federal, state, and local governments together to share resiliency knowledge and technologies, as well as to implement resiliency projects across jurisdictional boundaries.
As Central and Southwest Florida continue to experience environmental changes, further vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans are crucial to address and minimize related adverse effects to coastal and inland systems. CHNEP is providing funding toward the development of Comprehensive Vulnerability Assessments (CVAs) and Adaptation Action Area (AAA) Plans for the 10 counties in the CHNEP service area. The CVAs are designed to meet standards outlined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), making each County eligible for additional state funding. The goal is to identify critical assets inventories and assess the vulnerabilities and risks to such assets for the purposes of preparing adaptation measures and projects to reduce those vulnerabilities and risks.
After the inventories have been taken, input will be gathered from County and municipal staff, Community Organizations, and Public in areas within each County to inform the Adaptation Action Area (AAA) Plans. AAAs will be identified and prioritized based on the critical assets identified, exposure and sensitivity analysis, flood modeling, results of public meetings, input from the County, and guidelines from the Florida AAAs Planning Guidebook. Specific adaptation strategies and projects will be identified for the top three priority AAAs to address the threats identified in the County’s Vulnerability Assessment. These adaptation strategies can include protection, accommodation, relocation, and avoidance. The proposed projects will consider 1) Recommended Infrastructure Improvements (physical grey and green infrastructure with a focus on nature-based solutions), (2) Recommended Building Codes and Standards, (3) Resiliency Hub Needs (shelter in place, food, water, energy, communications, etc.), and (4) Funding and Financing needs (i.e. estimated costs for implementation of each recommended strategy, project) for implementation in order to enhance the County’s resiliency.
Select a county to learn more about specific resiliency planning goals and to download relevant documents like fact sheets.
Living Shorelines & Green Infrastructure
“Green infrastructure” is one example of a practice that enhances resiliency. It supports healthy ecosystems while protecting developed areas, using techniques such as created oyster reefs and living shorelines that mimic nature to lessen or offset impacts.
Scientific studies such as one published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2015 point to the fact that “built infrastructure” such as seawalls can be less effective in providing protection than green infrastructure or hybrid approaches that combine the two. Simultaneously protecting people and the environment with these techniques provides us multiple benefits, giving us even more bang for our buck!