On-going Discussion: Post questions and comments

on the toolkit page:
toolkit.climate.gov/get-started/step-1-identify-problem

You have a list of links headed "Selected Tools, Templates, and Examples for Encouraging Effective Community Engagement"
I suggest you change the link from the first on to go to this page:
masgc.org/coastal-storms-program/resilience-index

Rather that to the PDF document it currently goes to.  That PDF document is linked to from the above URL.

(. . . it is going to take  a long time to make comments this way . . . )

    While exploring the Toolkit to help answer my climate related question, I found the section titled: Taking Action, which highlights Case Studies of Resilience in Action to be very insightful. Particularly, the case study titled: Shopping Mall Exhibit Raises Awareness of Sea Level Rise. My original question that I posted on the forum was “how do I effectively communicate the science that CT Sea Grant is doing to community stakeholders who might not understand the importance or benefit to them?” Researching this question then led me to also want to include members of the community who we at CT Sea Grant are not reaching with our outreach messages at all, due to a reason such as not having a community member on our mailing lists.

Three of us working on climate and health piloted the Toolkit, and I've consolidated our comments here, organized by section. Overall, we think this is a very valuable and user-friendly tool, particularly in terms of navigation and language, and we thank you again for the opportunity to pilot this from a public health perspective.

General/Overall Climate Resilience Toolkit Comments:
• We began by attempting to answer our climate challenge question of how a coastal (or inland but flood-prone) community can improve its resiliency in the event of a power outage. We attempted to use the toolkit broadly but also focus on human health, since we are a state health department.
• Searching on “power outage” on the website does not really yield any useful search results for coastal communities looking to improve their resiliency for power outages.
• Overall, we feel the toolkit is logically divided into steps that parallel the CDC BRACE framework, which makes it easy to navigate from the point at which a community would be ready to engage (e.g., a community may already be aware of a given impact but may not yet have assessed their vulnerability, so could easily begin using the toolkit at Step 2). However, a primary suggestion would be to provide a bit more detail on the secondary impacts of coastal events versus just the primary impacts associated with flooding.
• Page navigation is clear for the most part, and language is at a level appropriate for someone who doesn’t necessarily work with climate change on a day-to-day basis, which is practical and realistic.
• Some of the individual resources that this website links to do provide case studies and other information which could be useful to planners trying to enhance resilience for power outage (e.g., the “Building Climate Resilience in the Health Sector” links to the DHHS document Primary Protection: Enhancing Health Care Resilience for a Changing Climate). However, with so much information on the internet we don’t know how much we’d dig through this website.
• As we were looking through for our flooding question, we didn’t see anything on CO poisoning, which occurs commonly in the aftermath of these events. Please consider adding some information on this.
• We would also recommend inclusion of a recommendation that water supply operators be given badges and access to roads to get to their facility following a storm. During the Superstorm Sandy response, the water supply operators weren’t recognized as first responders as were fire, EMS, and others, so the restoration of a safe public water supply was delayed.
• It was a bit odd for the same glossary terms to be listed identically on several pages. It seems more common to have one page of glossary terms and then provide links to those terms/that page throughout the rest of the pages’ content.
• Under Building Resilience in Coastal Communities in the Coastal Flood Risk section, there is one paragraph which deals with assessing potential impacts:
“Consider potential impacts to both natural and built environments. Coastal environmental health is closely linked to sea level. Categories of impacts to consider include infrastructure, loss of land, marsh migration, flooding impacts on land and infrastructure, social and economic impacts, saltwater intrusion, bank and bluff failure, and coastal erosion.”
Maybe some additional links in this section which provide guidance not only on the immediate impacts (i.e., flooding affects, high winds, etc.) but also the secondary effects (i.e., the power outage which may result) would be helpful?
o For example, you might consider including a document such as Power Failure: How Climate Change Puts Our Electricity at Risk – and What We Can Do (published by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
o Another potential resource might be Weather The Storm: Building Business Resilience to Climate Change (published by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change).
• Much of the coastal community content is grouped Coastal Flood Risk. It, rightfully, focuses on how flooding impacts may occur and includes a “building resilience” section but stays fairly high level. But there is not a lot of focus on specific aspects of resilience (e.g., for power outages).

Step 1 Comments:
• The first resource tool (the Coastal Resilience Index) is a good assessment tool and is easy to use without requiring many resources or expertise. However, more appropriate placement of the tool would be under step 2, vulnerability assessment, because this is exactly what the tool helps you assess.

Other comments about the Coastal Resilience Index tool:
o Nursing homes, long-term care facilities, and dialysis centers are missing from this index. Evacuation shelters for both the general population and for those with special needs are also missing from the index.
o The tool should consider private wells/water supply and should consider microgrids for an alternate power grid for key facilities.
o Why is one week established as the standard measure for areas being operational? Is this a standard time period used in the preparedness field?

Step 2 Comments:
• Step 2 is missing needed tools – it appears that at least some of the tools that assess vulnerability are currently housed under Step 1 and this isn’t logical placement when Step 2 is supposed to be about assessing vulnerability.
• Several other considerations should be incorporated into the toolkit when communities are assessing their vulnerability and risk to ensure communities are prepared for flooding, including:
o Does the community have a strategic fuel reserve and is there a protocol for who can access that fuel reserve?
o Do the community’s hospitals have MOUs with other hospitals /long-term care facilities?
o Is there a comprehensive healthcare evacuation plan? If so, how are evacuations coordinated? Are there staff with neighboring states through MOUs for EMS support, etc.? It is critical to not limit MOU agreements to just neighboring communities but also to have agreements in place with those outside of the region.
o Who can deliver equipment? For example, in the case of Hurricane Sandy, NJ was closer to bring supplies to NY. Who is outside of region and what if outside region includes another state?
o Consider that waivers have to be issued to have licensed practitioners practice in another state (e.g., to administer vaccinations, for nurses to do dialysis care).
o Where are hospitals’ data servers or generators located? Does everyone have generators? If generators are in the basement, for example, they are more vulnerable to flooding. MOUs should be in place so that if data servers go offline, there is someplace outside of the region that houses data. This is especially important for patient records.
o Protection of water supply – for example, building protective flood walls, private wells (education/inspection).
o Protection of residential oil/inspection to avoid oil spillage (suggest adding potential interventions as recommendations for prevention of spills).
o Stress importance of accurate GIS mapping of all mains/shutoff valves for the water system.

“Health Sector” Comments:
• The toolkit needs to stress that it is critical to establish relationships between local health departments and state health departments. This is important in terms of the coordination of evacuations and the delivery of resources during periods following a flood event. Healthcare facilities need relationships with their local health department. Along with these relationships, it is critical for all healthcare facilities to have a disaster plan that they exercise. We stress the importance of not just having a plan in place, but exercising that plan to inform needed modifications to the plan. Also, the presence of a pediatric plan for hospital surge capacity and treatment should be recommended in this toolkit. There needs to be a tracking and monitoring system for patients in terms of evacuation and transfer.
• The health sector part of this toolkit could be improved by providing specific examples for each of the five broad steps that make up the toolkit’s recommended “process.”

“Severe Storms and Flooding” Section Comments:
• We recommend adding in content covering residential oil spills prevention and cleanup.
• We noticed that the Tools on this page are spanned over 3 pages that you have to tab through, which is strange versus having them all as part of one scrollable list.
• It is important to note that water main breaks can lead to pressure falling below fire suppression capability, which occurred following Superstorm Sandy.

Step 3 Comments:
• We felt that this section is most lacking in that we would expect to see here some specific intervention suggestions. These should come from the literature, and when possible, have been evaluated/established as best practices.
• It would be helpful, especially if there isn’t a specific list of interventions, to advise on how to identify and select interventions. Describe how to find potential interventions as identified in the literature, and evaluate which of these is most appropriate given the particular jurisdiction’s vulnerabilities and resources available.
• There should be a suggestion for how to develop a list of potential partners for determining vulnerable populations and appropriate interventions. This section needs to be a lot more guided versus telling people to brainstorm. We need some examples!
• The “if money were no object” question is not realistic or helpful.
• We suggest inclusion of focused lists of potential inteventions for particular resilience challenges. And for particular entities and level of resource availability “(e.g., low hanging fruit interventions versus more resource intensive solutions) so that a broad range of options can be considered.
• Funding source guidance is vague, without listing of specific resources to consider (or links to these).

Step 4 Comments:
• This section could benefit from tools aiding in the evaluation of risk vs. benefit (e.g., a quadrant to aid in prioritization of interventions to problems with quadrants representing range from low to high risk and from low to high likelihood of occurrence). Perhaps one of the coastal flood risk tools included in the “Tools” main menu section addresses this? This section should also include guidance for developing an assessment plan within the mitigation plan.

Step 5 Comments:
• Some other ideas for taking action that communities should consider are:
o Coordination of how communities reach out to the public such as coordination for supplies, disaster recovery centers, and sheltering (concern for special needs shelters – clarify what types of populations they can care for and what resources they need in order to provide this care).
o Add general education on emergency declarations laws/waivers that might need to be made (perhaps a link to this information?).

“Taking Action” Section Comments:
• These case studies are wonderfully done and provide diverse examples from across the US. We think these are great for inspiring interventions as they highlight creative innovation to reducing vulnerability to climate related impacts. We recommend adding “health” as a topic to filter by and/or adding case studies that pertain to health impacts.

Q. Could the map showing state climatologists also indicate relevant state offices, e.g., state office of climate change? This might require some utility for such units to provide their information as the federal agencies likely do not have relevant databases. However, our state climatologist does very little outreach and constituent support, it's more likely a community leader or other decision maker could get help from a state agency.

Is it really necessary to have the glossary on every step's page? Why not on one page of its own?

Step 4: Evaluate Risks & Costs
Consider risks and values to analyze the costs and benefits of favored options. Select the best solution for your situation and make a plan.

From <http://toolkit.climate.gov/get-started/step-4-evaluate-risks-costs>


In general, there doesn't seem to be a very good alignment between the tools listed on the right of the screen and the respective step under which they are listed.E.G., Coastal Resilience and the SLR viewer, listed under step 3, seem more useful for step 2, and the entire discussion of farm carbon management in step 4 tools seems more focused on mitigation and has little to do with evaluating risks and costs. Or are the links on the right not intended to correspond to the steps? If so, it's confusing and the real estate might be more effectively used by listing resources related to the step.

The text under each step is helpful as a general introduction, but it might be more applicable if it included more specific references to examples, tools, etc.

From <http://toolkit.climate.gov/tools/climate-explorer>


Users following the 5 steps don't appear to be expressly directed to the Climate Explorer and the relevant instructions and tutorials included there.

Climate.Data.Gov
There are so many datasets here, that user groups, especially municipal staff and volunteers will need guidance on what to use and how.
What does location filter do? Does it actually return all datasets relevant to any specified location?

I agree with janetri. I was looking for qualitative or quantitative methods to evaluate alternative adaptation strategies so that local governments could determine how to allocate scarce resources. Unfortunately, the toolkit didn't offer much in resources that might demonstrate how to conduct cost benefit analysis or some other assessment procedure. And unless I missed it, it doesn't appear that any guidance is offered to enable evaluation of such strategies as conditions change over time (rising seas will render some strategies (i.e. strengthening bulkheads) ineffective over time as water levels rise, so how do you measure how much breathing room any particular strategy would provide).

I do like the logical, 5-step sequence that the toolbox prescribes and the resource links available in the tool box are incredibly extensive and valuable. Since I am beginning a series of public meetings to discuss vulnerability in towns we're working with along the NJ coast, I was intrigued by and reached out to the Know Your Line—High Water Mark Initiative.I haven't gotten a response yet but this is just one example of several resources I found that were directly applicable to the issues we're wrestling with. My only concern with the tools is that a municipal official not particularly familiar with the growing field of recovery and resiliency planning may be overwhelmed in the absence of some guidance through the maze. But if you're curious, it's clear that you can gather a considerable amount of information by just hunting through the myriad resources the tools pages offer.