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Seth Tuler and Tom Webler (SERI) Kirstin Dow, Nathan Kettle, Karly Miller (USC)

Integration of Local Planners' and Scientists' Knowledge of Consequences, Vulnerabilities, and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change Related Hazards. Seth Tuler and Tom Webler (SERI) Kirstin Dow, Nathan Kettle, Karly Miller (USC) Jessica Whitehead (Sea Grant)

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Seth Tuler and Tom Webler (SERI) Kirstin Dow, Nathan Kettle, Karly Miller (USC)

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  1. Integration of Local Planners' and Scientists' Knowledge of Consequences, Vulnerabilities, and AdaptationStrategies to Climate Change Related Hazards Seth Tuler and Tom Webler (SERI) Kirstin Dow, Nathan Kettle, Karly Miller (USC) Jessica Whitehead (Sea Grant) Sponsored by NOAA Climate Program Office, Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP)

  2. The context • Adaptation barriers at all stages • Coastal communities engaged in hazard management, but not much climate change adaptation • Informational and understanding, planning, and decision-making constraints • Calls to develop planning tools and processes • Facilitate local assessments • Integrate climate science and local knowledge about consequences, vulnerabilities, adaptation options, and priorities

  3. What we are doing • Designing and evaluating a facilitated process • Identify local climate stressors, consequences, vulnerabilities, and management options • Generate relevant scenarios • Elements • Integration of local knowledge with scientific information • Diagramming tool to highlight causal pathways • Anchored in conceptual frameworks of hazards/risks and vulnerability • Reasonable demands on time and resources

  4. We call it the “Vulnerability and Consequences Adaptation Planning Scenarios” (VCAPS) Process

  5. Sullivan’s Island, SC • Located just north of the Charleston Harbor entrance. • Approximately 8 sq. km. • Approximately 2,000 residents. • Development of Charleston Harbor has altered coastal processes along the coastline of Sullivan’s Island, causing both erosion and accretion. • Island lies entirely within the 100-year floodplain. • Flooding during exceptionally high tides. • Expected relative sea level rise will exacerbate flooding from storms and tides.

  6. Sullivan’s Island, SC • Local officials interested in learning, but some ambivalent about climate change. • No planning specifically for climate change impacts.

  7. Community responses to hazards • Coastal armoring • Regulation (building codes, impervious surface requirements, set-back requirements)

  8. Community responses to hazards • Land protection and beach renourishment Accreted land shaded in green (97 acres)

  9. Community responses to hazards • Cooperative service agreements and plans • Community education • Update/improve infrastructure (raised manholes, drainage flaps, replaced pipes)

  10. VCAPS process • Advance background interviews. • 4 two-hour facilitated meetings. • 9 people: Town staff, including Department heads, and Commission/Board members • Climate science presentation • Collective decision about management concerns to discuss (stormwater, wastewater) • Diagramming scenarios linking management concerns, climate stressors, consequences, and possible actions • A lessons learned document.

  11. VCAPS diagrams: Building blocks

  12. Participants’ insights about vulnerability and adaptation • There are opportunities for no/low regret strategies and co-benefits. • Management strategies can have unintended consequences. • Coordination and strategies for working with state agencies are needed. • Potential impacts will be multi-faceted • public health, property damage, financial costs, nuisance

  13. Participants’ insights about planning • Some types of expertise are held by one person. • More could be done to share information across departments, staff, and officials.

  14. Our insights about adaptation planning • A conceptual framework structured thinking and discussions. • Causal model of hazards • Vulnerability • Real-time diagramming supported understanding and sharing of information. • Self-generated scenarios were more credible. • Local planners were interested in working with consultants. • Local planners hungry for climate science relevant to local scale.

  15. Benefits of the VCAPS process • Inform vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning • Integrate local knowledge and climate science. • A “bottom-up” approach • Advance local adaptation planning by engaging (skeptical) LGOs • Meaningful local context • An opportunity for group learning • About climate science • A framework for thinking • Highlight multi-hazards approach, timing, and flexibility

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