Community Engagement to Enhance Resilience

Objectives

1. Local government officials increase their understanding of land-use policies and their applications to coastal development and environmental sustainability. 
2. Communities assess existing federal, state, and local laws, ordinances and regulations and determine how they can be modified to better address coastal development and environmental sustainability concerns. 
3. Communities enact plans and studies to understand long-term environmental concerns and take steps to address them. 
4. CRS communities maintain or improve their overall CRS score. 
5. Coastal communities reduce flood insurance costs for residents and businesses. 
6. Coastal communities adopt practices, policies, or plans that increase their resilience to SLR. 
7. The Gulf Resilience Community of Practice continues to grow and members understand the information needs of Gulf communities, develop regionally appropriate education materials and messages and work together to share lessons learned. 
8. Coastal communities and sectors identify vulnerabilities through completing the CRI, Fisheries Resilience Index, Ports Resilience Index, Tourism Resilience Index, or Oyster Farming Index or other indices. 
9. Communities are able to mitigate legal barriers to effective responses to environmental or economic disasters by identifying obstacles, researching solutions, and combining data in publicly available synopses.

Methodology

The extension team will take a multi-tiered, integrated approach to helping communities and businesses improve their resilience. This includes working with planners, floodplain managers, emergency managers, building officials, and other community and business leaders. The team will share information about the resilience indices that MASGC has developed with coastal communities and relevant sectors and as we identify their interest, the program lead will contact key personnel to create an invitation list to be sent to all participants. 

After a date has been set with the hosting community (and/or business) resources for the meeting will be prepared by the program lead. The program lead will facilitate the self-assessment meeting and create a report with notes and action items identified by the group. All notes and materials from the meeting will be uploaded into the CRI database so that each community can be contacted in the future for follow-up and project evaluation. However, this information will not be shared with other communities or businesses in order to maintain confidentiality. 

After a year, community participants and/or business leaders will be contacted to ask if they are willing to complete the self-assessment again and see what has changed. Comparisons of the index results will be made over a period of a year and half to determine what progress the community has made in reaching their goals to improve. Quantitative data will be collected on the number of communities (and/or businesses) who have completed the index, the comparative scores on the index over time, and the number of people in the community who have been involved in the process. We will deliver the latest in coastal planning and science to local government officials and staff by providing one-on-one consultation to local government officials who desire assistance on issues pertaining to coastal development and environmental sustainability. We will also work with Community Rating System (CRS) user groups Coastal Hazard Outreach Strategy Team (CHOST) and South Alabama Flood Engagement Team (SAFE-T) to identify knowledge gaps among communities related to CRS. 

Knowledge gaps will be addressed through workshops and webinars aimed at addressing specific questions communities have pertaining to CRS. Sea Grant will reach out to CRS experts and specialists to headline workshops and help guide communities through the intricacies of the program. One-on-one in-depth technical assistance will also be provided to communities interested in pursuing additional activities to improve their standing within the program. Communities that are currently not enrolled in CRS will be the subject of broader outreach initiatives aimed at highlighting the benefits of CRS participation and highlighting technical assistance Sea Grant can provide to help communities join CRS. 

Team members with legal and planning expertise will examine the existing state, federal, and local laws and regulations in Mississippi and Alabama to determine how those laws and regulations affect individual and community-wide audiences. Sample topics may include disaster preparation and recovery, limits on financial assistance, and demonstrable limitations in city ordinances to green infrastructure. The scope is informed by specific requests of community members or municipal officers. The team will continue to organize and host Lunch n Learns for municipalities, regional planning councils, and engineers and consultants and other critical partners that support resilience actions within local governments. 

Support for natural resource managers is provided via translating SLR science and new approaches for addressing uncertainty in management due to rising seas. Finally, the Gulf Resilience Community of Practice is likely the longest standing resilience CoP in the US and has had numerous positive impacts since it began in 2010. MASGC and partners around the Gulf will continue to support the success of this program, which focuses on increasing resilience to future storms and impacts. To accomplish the logic model goals created by the group, working groups were formed and will be maintained to complete tasks. For example, the Planning Team Working Group meets monthly and then twice a month when preparing the agenda for the annual meeting. 

The Small Grant Selections Working Group meets to develop the RFP and evaluation criteria and then again to review the proposals that are submitted. The Awards Committee meets to develop the criteria for award selection and then again to develop the voting, and finally to make the announcement on the selections and purchase of the awards. Our Webinar Working Group meets to develop content for upcoming online offerings. In the past there has been a Logic Model Working Group, a Tools Working Group, a Risk Communication Working Group, and others. The nature of a Community of Practice is that these working groups come and go as they are needed and as members have an interest. This approach has been functioning well with the CoP and there are plans to keep this structure moving forward. We have had a successful track record and will continue to apply for external funds to directly enhance the CoP activities and services. 

Anticipated Deliverables: 

• Work with at least 2 communities or businesses to complete a coastal community or sector index per year and assist them with finding solutions to their resilience vulnerabilities. 
• Present two law and planning presentations each year at the AL/MS State Planning Conference. 
• Provide facilitation and leadership support for at least 6 CRS user group meetings per year. 
• Assist two communities in beginning the application process for the CRS program over the course of four years. 
• Provide one-on-one technical assistance to three communities in Mississippi or Alabama to maintain or improve CRS scores over the course of four years. 
• Conduct outreach events in three communities in Mississippi or Alabama in support of earning outreach related CRS points over the course of four years. 
• Conduct two regional workshops each year to promote the value of CRS to local jurisdictions. 
• Provide technical assistance to 8 communities in developing new plans that enhance understanding of risks to coastal environment and provide basic objectives cities can work towards in order to be a more environmentally resilient coastal community over the course of four years. 
• Three communities in Mississippi and/or Alabama change ordinances or day-to-day planning practices as a result of newly acquired knowledge from sea grant workshops or from one-on-one consultation with investigator or other sea grant staff over the course of four years. 
• Provide resilience-related legal analysis for at least 2 communities per year. ? Conduct five resilience related outreach events (e.g. Lunch n Learns) per year shaped by the needs of the primary stakeholders 
• Provide one-on-one technical support to three communities in Mississippi and Alabama to provide locally specific SLR information to support policy and planning over the course of four years. 
• Organize, plan, and facilitate one annual COP meeting per year to take place within a local Gulf community with representatives from all five Gulf states. 
• Grant 1-3 Spirit of Community Awards per year to be given to one outstanding individual, one organization building equity within COP and one community that displays leadership in the field of resilience and shares best practices and lessons learned with others.

Rationale

Mississippi and Alabama coastal communities have experienced a wide range of disasters in the recent past and must continue to prepare for and be equipped to recover from future events. As the number of people moving to the Gulf coast increases, so does the risk of exposure to flooding, hurricanes, and other storm-related events. Although experience has shown that more homes and people located in the floodplain equals more exposure and potential for people to be in harm’s way, many coastal residents are complacent when asked about their preparation for the coming storm season. 

Recognizing that communities need support and assistance in determining their risk and resilience, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium created the Coastal Community Resilience Index (CRI) to help communities with collecting baseline data on the progress of resilience actions. The purpose of this self-assessment is to provide community leaders with a simple and inexpensive method of predicting if their community will reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure after a disaster. 

Experienced local planners, engineers, floodplain managers or administrators can complete this self-assessment using existing sources of information from their community. The goal is for every community to become highly resilient. The assessment may identify problems the community should address before the next disaster and where resources should be allocated. In addition, the business sector resilience indices can help individual businesses assess their risks and vulnerabilities so that they can proactively address them before the next disaster. Within the field of urban planning there has been considerable study on how cities have adapted to adverse environmental conditions. 

Many of these studies have yielded valuable frameworks and tools, which may help bridge the gap between our understanding of the coast and our understanding of the way cities grow. Local government officials though have many enforcement duties, which prevent them from learning how to best account for adverse environmental factors in their daily work. As a coastal extension service, Sea Grant is uniquely suited to bridging the gap between community planning and applied research in coastal science. 

The Community Rating System (CRS) provides a holistic approach to hazard mitigation and community resilience that requires communities to go beyond minimum standards. Communities that participate in CRS can reduce the cost of flood insurance premiums while developing activities to improve risk awareness and increase resilience. CRS is a nationally recognized standard for coastal resilience and has clear objectives that communities can undertake to improve their standing in the program. CRS is a highly rigorous program though and it takes considerable time for communities just to maintain their current standing in the program. With aid from Sea Grant extension though, communities can pursue additional activities to improve CRS scores and enhance risk communication. MASGC, with its connections to state and federal resilience partners, has the resources at its disposal to serve as a valued partner in providing in-depth technical assistance and continuing education to coastal communities on CRS. 

The legal landscape related to community and business resilience is extremely complex. Legal research and extension activities on the impacts from changed circumstances requires examining existing laws, regulations, ordinances of states and cities will help communities and industries better prepare for the risks they face. Research requires examining flooding, stormwater, waste water treatment systems, zoning ordinances and many other topics. 

The Resilience Community of Practice brings together extension, outreach and education professionals and community officials in the Gulf to learn how coastal communities can adapt to sea-level rise, precipitation changes and other issues. Extension, outreach and education professionals and local decision-makers work together so that they can be better equipped with reliable information and science-based guidance regarding the level of risk to their communities and strategies they can use to adapt to changes. 

Alignment to MASGC Goals: 

• Coastal communities have the capability and resources to prepare for and adapt to extreme and chronic weather and coastal hazards, economic disruptions and other threats to community health and well-being.