Introduction: Post a paragraph about your resilience work

    Hello Everyone,

    My name is Mike Mahoney and I recently graduated (June, 2014) from Antioch University New England where I received my Master’s in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Sustainable Development and Climate Change (SDCC). Currently, along with working for Connecticut Sea Grant on projects related to coastal resilience and climate adaptation I attend the University of Rhode Island where I am completing a graduate certificate in GIS/Remote Sensing applications with emphasis on coastal management issues.

    Specifically, one of the main issues we are working on in CT is how to use living shorelines over hardened structures such as seawalls which increase erosion and disrupt natural processes such as dune and marsh migration along the Ct coast and Long Island Sound. Our current working definition of living shorelines is:

    By incorporating the Climate Resilience Toolkit within my work I hope to be able to more effectively communicate the threat of climate change and provide worldwide tools that members of the community will be willing to utilize in combating these and other climate related issues.

The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) is working to foster adaptation planning with an emphasis on building resilience at the local level, and with prioritization of its most vulnerable populations. Coastal-related work is ongoing, including the areas of emergency preparedness, water supply protection, long-term care facilities, and participation on the Sea Level Rise Task Force, with some examples of this work detailed below:

Preparedness activities related to coastal storm planning include many year-round initiatives:
• A Coastal Storm Plan is being updated with New York City and adjoining counties.
• A patient/client tracking system called e-FINDS (Evacuation of Facilities in Disasters System) has been established, which is hosted on the NYSDOH Health Commerce System.
• Medical supplies and equipment have been pre-staged downstate through the NYSDOH Medical Emergency Response Cache Program, and State Office of Emergency Management has also established caches throughout the state in case supplies are needed (including sheltering supplies, Meals Ready to Eat, and the ability to order bottled water and secure potable water in cooperation with NYSDOH).
• Planning initiatives with the New York City Office of Emergency Management such as the Advanced Warning System (where residents receive alerts) have bolstered response to threats to NYC, including coastal events such as flooding or hurricanes.

Water supply protection activities include:
• Large public water systems are required to complete a vulnerability assessment and submit it to NYSDOH so that protective measures can be developed, which is in part why during Superstorm Sandy public water systems were in relatively good shape compared to other infrastructure.
• NYSDOH considers flooding in its review of public water systems that use wells to pump groundwater. For example, the risk for flooding of wells is reduced by increasing the height of the well casing to keep the top of the well above flood waters. Also, treatment, controls, etc. are located on high ground or in infrastructure to handle flooding.
• Programs are in place to protect the aquifers on Long Island from salt water intrusion.
• Nassau and Suffolk County health departments have very active source water assessment programs for evaluating the vulnerability of the source water for the public water supply (as per amendments to the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act).
• The Long Island water supply’s assessment included a comprehensive modeling effort to identify the source of water for each well used, allowing for identification of vulnerabilities.

Actions taken to build resilience of long-term care (LTC) facilities and hospitals include:
• Following Superstorm Sandy, surveys were conducted with LTC facilities in NYC to analyze their ability to evacuate or shelter in place. The same kind of survey was sent to receiving LTC facilities. Send/receive arrangements have been asked for by NYSDOH for the NYC boroughs as well as for LTC facilities located outside of the flood zone to receive LTC residents.
• Critical asset inventories are maintained and facilities are asked how much facility load they can maintain (following an event) and how long can they maintain that load.
• A microgrids project has been initiated so that a given NYS area of certain buildings would be on a separate power grid and so would still receive power in event of an outage.
• NYSDOH is currently assessing continuity of operations planning and asking facilities to identify what their critical operations are, and how long they could maintain those operations.

Key points about NYSDOH participation on the Sea Level Rise Task Force:
• The task force was created in 2007 by the New York State Legislature to assess impacts to the state’s coastlines from rising seas and recommend protective and adaptive measures.
• The task force delivered its final report to the Legislature on December 31, 2010 (see www.dec.ny.gov/energy/75794.html for more information).

Temperature, Precipitation, Sea Level, and Extreme Events
Even with significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, some impacts of climate change are unavoidable. As global temperatures rise, a number of climate factors are affected from place to place and season to season. While some regions may experience warming, other regions may become colder. Precipitation may increase in some regions, causing floods and mudslides, while decreasing in other regions, causing droughts and water shortages. In Yonkers, temperature, precipitation, sea level, and extreme events are all expected to change. In fact, a number of these factors are already changing locally. According to New York City Panel on Climate Change report Climate Risk Information, it is extremely likely that Yonkers will experience warmer temperatures. It is more likely than not that total annual precipitation will increase. Brief, intense precipitation events are likely to increase. It is extremely likely that Yonkers will experience rising sea levels along its Hudson River shoreline. Global climate models project sea level rise in New York City and Yonkers of 2 to 5 inches by the 2020s, 7 to 12 inches by the 2050s, and 12 to 23 inches by the 2080s. The report also warns that heat waves will likely become more frequent, intense and longer in duration.

Infrastructure Impacts and Adaptation
Climate impacts likely to be experienced in Yonkers include increased street, basement, and sewer flooding, increased peak electricity loads, and higher incidences of heat related disease and mortality. Some areas of the Yonkers waterfront may be flooded periodically or permanently by the end of the twenty first century. Yonkers should anticipate the impacts of climate change on new development and the natural environment. While climate change is a global problem, reducing greenhouse gas emission and addressing the likely impacts of climate change are local imperatives. Yonkers is in position to make a meaningful contribution to the solution by promoting and implementing cleaner transportation, green buildings, alternative energy and sustainable development.

In 2014, the City worked closely with New York State Governor's Office of Storm Recovery and our local community partners to develop a NY Rising Community Reconstruction Plan, an important step toward rebuilding a more resilient community. Designed and driven by community stakeholders, this plan will account for Yonkers-specific needs, opportunities and strategies. Yonkers is eligible for $3 million of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to implement the plan.

Brad Tito Bio
As Director of Sustainability for the City of Yonkers - New York's fourth largest city - I work with the departments of city government and community stakeholders to save energy and improve the environment. My projects are expected to save taxpayers $20 million in energy costs over 10 years and include the Yonkers Energy Plan, a comprehensive LED streetlight replacement project, and mandatory green building standards. I specialize in targeted actions that generate measurable results in the areas of energy, water, solid waste, buildings, green infrastructure and transportation. Prior to working for Yonkers, I served as the Director of Environmental Coordination for Nassau County, NY where I worked for five years developing and executing a broad range of environmental and health initiatives. I began my career building houses that coupled energy efficiency and renewable energy with green infrastructure and eco-friendly materials. I have a master's degree in Urban Policy Analysis and Management from the New School University and a bachelor's degree in Sustainable Development from Prescott College in Arizona.


Brad Tito
Director of Sustainability
City of Yonkers
(914) 377-6547
brad.tito@yonkersny.gov
www.yonkersny.gov


www.linkedin.com/in/bradtito
www.twitter.com/bradjtito

I manage New Jersey Future’s s Local Recovery Planning Manager program. I’m a licensed professional planner with over 25 years of land use and environmental planning experience. New Jersey Future is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. Since it's founding in 1987, the organization has been a strong advocate for responsible land use policies that promote community revitalization, natural lands preservation and greater housing and transportation choices throughout New Jersey. A few months after Hurricane Sandy, at the urging of FEMA and with funding from various philanthropic organizations, New Jersey Future initiated a program that embedded Local Recovery Planning Managers (LRPMs) in six coastal communities that experienced severe storm damage. The LRPMs, who engage with a town for a minimum of 18 months, work directly and regularly with municipal staff, providing much-needed additional capacity to plan and manage recovery projects while helping to secure funding for implementation.

For each community participating in New Jersey Future’s program, the LRPM is preparing a detailed assessment of that municipality’s risk and vulnerability to future flooding and sea-level rise. The assessment is a fine-grained, parcel-based mapping analysis that predicts depths of inundation throughout the community, models resulting structural damage and calculates community-wide financial exposure and potential tax revenue losses under various future scenarios. This level of detail is absolutely essential if the community is to reach a realistic determination of how and where to most effectively allocate extremely scare personnel and financial resources.

Vulnerability assessments completed to date reveal that within the foreseeable future, each town participating in the LRPM program faces considerable potential exposure to sea-level rise with extensive portions of the municipality’s built and natural environment at risk with clear and significant probable economic loss. It’s not a stretch to generalize these findings to every community along the entire Jersey coast. Our challenge is figuring out the best way to convey a community’s potential exposure to future flood inundation and sea-level rise in a manner that encourages rational discussion, helping municipalities understand the dimension of that risk and working with them to plan practical short- and long-term adaptation strategies.

I work at the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council as a coastal geologist. RI is vulnerable to many impacts of climate change but I deal specifically with coastal issues. The primary stressors for me are coastal erosion, sea level rise, more intense storms and higher storm surges in the future, loss of wetlands due to rapid sea level rise.

I am currently working with a team scientists, managers, and educators on the Shoreline Change Special Area Management Plan, aka Beach SAMP, to look at current coastal hazards and how these will be exacerbated by climate change. We are coupling shoreline erosion with tidal and storm surge inundation for current and future conditions. The plan also relies heavily on community outreach to the general public and stakeholder groups. For example, the team has developed a coastal homebuyer’s guide which proposes a series of questions that potential property owners should be asking before investing in coastal property. The guide links the reader to the resources for determining shoreline erosion rates, where to find regulations that may restrict what they will be able to do on the property, how to access maps showing sea level rise projections to view impacts to the property as well as access to the property and other. We are currently working with the RI Realtors Association to develop a class focused on the homebuyer’s guide for continuing education credits for realtors.

I participate in the RI State Agency Climate/Hazard Coordination Group to share mapping and other projects. The purpose of the group is to enhance climate adaptation efforts across state agencies and to cut down on duplication of efforts.

Another initiative is a statewide SLAMM (Sea Levels Affecting Marshes Model) mapping project with outreach to all coastal communities in the state, and incorporation of the results into the CRMC regulations. In addition, I partner with others on marsh restoration for resilience to sea level rise and shoreline adaptation projects around the state, including monitoring the Misquamicut shoreline post beach and dune restoration.

Hello everyone, my name is Katerina Oskarsson and I work as a Management Analyst at the City of Norfolk. In this role, I work with Norfolk's Chief Resilience Officer on the development of the City's resilience strategy as part of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Initiative. Prior to that, I worked as an analyst at NATO, focusing on non-traditional threats, including climate change effects and water-energy-food-security nexuses. I recently earned PhD in International Studies with concentration in interdependence/globalization issues and international political economy. 

We have conducted numerous vulnerability and risk analyses since 2007 and hope to learn about specific ways to build resilience at the local level. We are currently exploring how to improve our economic vitality, strengthen our vulnerable neighborhoods, and build social cohesion around water management solutions.