The Infrastructures of Tomorrow: Integrating Local Planning and Management for Climate Resilient Stormwater Systems

Local governments tend to produce disjointed planning and implementation responses to ambiguous problems. This study adapts a cognitive science framework known as active inference to investigate local government resilience planning and management processes. We contend that disconnects between planning and management reflect the inadequacy of the “knowledge infrastructure” systems which could enable more adaptive responses. Using a mixed-methods approach to study stormwater resilience in the U.S. state of Indiana, we find evidence that municipalities integrate planning and management efforts relative to experienced flooding impacts. However, they are less likely to proactively develop information on longer-term or more distant climate impacts.