Sounding the Climate Alarm
Change is happening. Is anyone coming to our rescue?
By Karin Rogers, Director of Operations
Our climate is changing before our eyes, and many of us see — even experience — the weather extremes it’s bringing first-hand. Think Hurricanes Sandy and Harvey, wildfires in California and the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, riverine flooding in the Midwest. The headlines fill up our TV screens, our phones, our inboxes.
It often feels like the fire alarm is going off, and we’re watching the fire get bigger, and we’re wondering who’s running to our rescue. Will anyone?
In reality, it’s the local communities that are going to have to step up and deal with this change. They have the assets and services we depend on (think roads, running water, stormwater systems, and so on). These assets and services are going to be stressed — even threatened — by the extreme weather events we’re seeing. The brunt of this impact is local, and cities, counties, communities, and other like-minded organizations are going to have to figure out how to deal with their changing realities.
Our group is trying to help them.
Scrambling to get there
UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) and our partner, FernLeaf Interactive, are finding ways to use and target information to help municipalities navigate this change. We have extensive experience with maps, with data, with showing trends — and understanding how this data is used to highlight where people and places are vulnerable. And where they’re at risk.
We’re not the only ones. There’s a firehose of climate data out there, and it evolves and improves every year, every month, every week, every day. There are also hundreds, if not thousands, of people with a mapping (GIS) background who are becoming experts in bringing climate data to the people — bringing a figurative firehose of data to the fire.
But will more data help put out the fire? Is it enough? How do cities and counties and communities get beyond the data? How do they get past just seeing the problem on a map? What can they do?
They need to go further. They need a fire ladder — a way out, to get beyond the data they’re seeing to concrete and tangible solutions. They need to know how to take action in the face of drought, extreme heat, flooding, landslides, wildfire, and the many more impacts that are happening before their eyes.
The tools and the smarts to fight the fire
NEMAC+FernLeaf is developing exciting software products that keep vulnerability and risk assessments up to date and enable interactive exploration of the analysis down to an asset scale — learn more about AccelAdapt here.
Products such as AccelAdapt are a firehose of sorts, bringing in the relevant data at the right scale that can be applied exactly where it’s needed. But that’s not all it takes to fight a fire. Communities and organizations need both the firehose AND the smarts of a firefighter to successfully address the fire.
Our group is all about thinking differently, working differently. Our approach uses data and interactive tools, but we go further by integrating collaborative problem solving and methods of working together — working across silos and municipal departments and jurisdictional boundaries. It’s smart. Like a firefighter.
- We apply scenario planning to help people think about what they would do differently to preserve the things they care about, if a certain future came to pass. This helps people connect community values in the face of this uncertain future—trying to understand the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces that affect the things they care about. We use what we learn to help guide effective and efficient decision making.
- We help communities identify options that target different aspects of vulnerability and risk, but we also help prioritize what’s feasible — financially, politically, socially — and figure out what actions rise to the top. This collaborative prioritization helps communities narrow down options and strategies that actually make a difference in their changing realities.
- We help communities integrate social equity measures into their resilience planning, given increased demand for resources and services and corresponding increased social vulnerability for some populations. We strive to promote fairness, equity, and social responsibility for all people — where everyone has access to the same opportunities.
- And, finally, we bridge the information gap to others by connecting and communicating how we can be resilient as a larger whole, together. So we help with community involvement and the promotion of communication, education, and awareness to all stakeholders who may be impacted.
We can all become more resilient to our changing realities by thinking differently.
NEMAC+FernLeaf want to help you do it.
