Building adaptive capacity of US Gulf Coast city practitioners to extreme weather events
Abstract Building city practitioners’ capacity to prepare for and respond to climate change-driven events can increase coastal cities’ resilience. We conducted a first-of-its-kind mixed methods research project from 2021 to 2023 with 46 US Gulf Coast small and midsize cities to measure the effectiveness of an adaptive capacity-building intervention: a stormwater planning tool called FloodWise Communities (FWC) deployed through the engagement between researchers and practitioners in each city. City practitioners were surveyed pre- and post-intervention between September 2021 and December 2022. Interviews were then conducted through July 2023. We found (1) FWC positively relates to perceptions of actionable knowledge and a change in adaptation intentions; (2) city practitioners’ adaptation-relevant roles and responsibilities positively related to their perceptions of actionable knowledge and adaptation intentions, with implications for their agency to build adaptive capacity; and (3) anticipated and unanticipated uses of the FWC tool influenced city practitioners’ perceptions of their adaptive capacity.
Authors
- Sarah J. Fendrich (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6653-7407)
- Derek Van Berkel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1001-783X)
- Mark A. Shafer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8187-007X)
- Alex Basaraba (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9755-5963)
- Natalie Herbert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3172-950X)
- Alexander Petersen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4073-9603)
- Joshua J. Wimhurst (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2606-3910)
- Kripa Jagannathan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4584-8358)
- Simone J. Domingue (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0385-3941)
- Gabrielle Wong‐Parodi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5207-7489)
- Jenna Jorns (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0384-3727)
- Erica Akemi Goto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1361-7213)
- Maria Carmen Lemos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6686-730X)
- T. Harrison
- Lisa Maillard
- Anima Scott Kalafatis
- Patty Hernandez
Institutions
- Tulane University (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- Cardiovascular Institute of the South (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- University of Oklahoma (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PNAS Nexus
- Published
- 2026-09-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag330
- Primary Topic
- Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00