Land Use and Built Environment Climate Science and Tools
This tab presents climate science and tools for understanding climate change impacts in land use and the built environment and potential adaptation options.
Resources are automatically presented by rating, but can also be sorted by date and title. Apply additional filters to narrow the list by resource type, impact, region, state, or jurisdictional focus.
129 results are shown below.
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Resource
July 12, 2017
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), hundreds of coastal communities in the U. S. have, or can expect to have, chronic and disruptive flooding inundation from sea level rise in the next few decades. This study identifies all of these communities that will experience enough severe flooding to require either large investments to defend or accommodate sea level rise, or, have to retreat and relocate. The analysis also identifies the “response time” remaining before such flooding occurs, and therefore gives affected communities perspective on the time they have to prepare.
Resource Category: Assessments
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Developed in partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation and Arup, the City Resilience Index is a web-based tool for conducting a city-wide resilience assessment. Based on evidence from 28 cities and three years of research into what constitutes resilience, the Index is globally applicable - and has already been tested in five cities: Arusha, Concepción, Shimla, Hong Kong, and Liverpool.
Resource Category: Assessments
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Resource
June 28, 2017
The STAR Communities online Climate Change Guide was developed to help communities address climate change within their sustainability planning process. The guide utilizes the STAR Community Rating System to offer user-friendly guidance to advance local government efforts toward climate change mitigation and adaptation. The STAR Community Rating System is a leading framework and certification program in the U. S. for evaluating local sustainability through economic, environmental, and social performance measures.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Resource
2017
My RainReady is a free, online tool that helps building owners diagnose the flooding risks of single-family homes and small apartment buildings, and find the best means of reducing the risk of damage from urban flooding. After the user answers a series of guided questions, My RainReady provides a tailored flood mitigation and preparedness measures, such as landscaping and construction improvements. My RainReady provides a customized report that suggests a mix of home maintenance and DIY improvements, landscaping and construction options, and flood preparedness actions.
Author or Affiliated User: Marcella Bondie Keenan
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Resource
2017
The Atlas is an online “marketplace and recommendation engine” for environmental technology and infrastructure solutions. Over 250 sustainable, resilient and/or green infrastructure projects and tools are showcased on the Atlas website. These climate adaptive infrastructure solutions can be used to support the new design of similar systems.
Author or Affiliated User: Elle Hempen
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
April 2017
Prepared for the California Air Resources Board and the California Environmental Protection Agency, this report describes the development of a “cool” pavement life-cycle assessment (pLCA) tool. The tool was created to help local officials in California cities to evaluate the environmental impacts of alternative pavement types - from extraction of materials through construction and use to removal and disposal or recycling of materials. This study aims to help California cities adopt pavement management strategies that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the urban heat island effect.
Resource Category: Solutions
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February 13, 2017
Surging Seas is a suite of free public web tools for sea level rise and coastal flood analysis from Climate Central. Climate Central has identified many ways the Surging Seas web tool could be used with FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)’s Community Rating System (CRS). CRS is a voluntary insurance rating program that recognizes communities for implementing floodplain management practices that exceed the Federal minimum requirements of the NFIP. In exchange for flood risk reduction, policyholders can receive reduced flood insurance premiums.
Author or Affiliated User: Daniel Rizza
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Resource
2017
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s modeling tool, Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS) supports land use and change modeling based on nationwide modeled population, residential development, and impervious surface cover changes by decade to the year 2100. The second version (v2) of ICLUS released in 2017 includes updated population and land use data sets, and addresses limitations identified in ICLUS v1 in both the migration and spatial allocation models. The EPA suggests that improvements in ICLUS v2 facilitate the analysis of scenarios of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation options - including the use of ICLUS v2 outputs in models projecting emissions from developed land uses to determine consequences for water and air quality endpoints, as well as human health.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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The Our Coast, Our Future (OCOF) project provides online maps and tools of local sea level rise and storm vulnerability within the San Francisco Bay Area, California. OCOF has modelled coastal impacts such as water levels, wave heights, flooding, and erosion; and mapping infrastructure and ecosystem vulnerabilities at scales relevant to planning and management.
Resource Category: Planning
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Resource
2017
In 2017, the District of Columbia’s Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) launched the country’s first resilience tool to identify opportunities for protecting residents in multifamily affordable housing from heat waves, flooding, and other climate change impacts. The city already faces a tight housing market with significant shortages in affordable housing. Climate change is expected to only exacerbate this pressure by increasing the cost of maintaining comfortable homes in the summer and protecting households from flooding. In order to help advance the goals of the city’s climate adaptation plan, DOEE worked with nonprofit partners to develop the Resilience and Solar Assessment Tool. The tool consists of a series of questionnaires that building owners can use to identify the building’s resilience to potential climate change impacts, examining characteristics like accessibility, emergency management plans, and electrical, mechanical, and plumbing equipment. Based on the outcome of the assessment, the tool provides additional recommendations for implementing resilience strategies at varying cost and scale.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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