Enhancing Resilience Capacity to Climate-Related Natural Hazards for Disadvantaged Communities: Assessment of Existing Information and Approach

Under-served and impoverished communities can be exposed to the worst climate and environmental hazards. Community managers must identify these potential hazards and build resilience to withstand them. Enhancing community resilience requires three major steps: (1) Examining available information, (2) Conducting community engagement and assessing local knowledge, and (3) Developing and implementing reasonable strategies to enhance resilience. This article examines the first component of this three-step approach in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. First, information concerning existing county-level resilience to climate hazards, including well-being and climate/social equity, was evaluated using selected existing models and tools. These climate hazards included inland flooding, variations in temperature, landslides, tropical storms, and other potential natural climatic hazards in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Through evaluation with EPA Regional staff and the use of Environmental Justice 40 information, social justice and environmental justice communities were selected to develop further climate resilience capacity strategies addressing possible adverse community outcomes of natural hazard events. Continuing studies beyond the evaluation of available data will be described elsewhere. They will examine local knowledge and community engagement to gauge the success of the community engagements, determine potential strategies to enhance resilience, develop plans for local implementation, and assess the transferability of the approach to other candidate communities.