AI-Generated Summary
About the Document
This is a report from the Georgetown Climate Center, published November 14, 2016 on georgetownclimate.org. It examines the Rebuild by Design (RBD) competition launched by the Obama administration with The Rockefeller Foundation after Hurricane Sandy. Its subject is how infrastructure projects can deliver multiple community resilience benefits, and it is described as capturing lessons from both the proposal process and the projects generated by the competition.
Background and Scope
- The competition aimed to inspire affected communities to rebuild in ways that enhance physical, economic, social, and environmental resilience.
- The report looks at the six projects, with case studies on the State of New York, State of New Jersey and City of New York, the grantees of the funding.
- The report states that it covers how grantees are navigating and overcoming legal and policy barriers as they move from conceptual proposals to physical projects.
Resilience Approaches Examined
- A comparative summary chapter covers nature-based coastal defenses against storm surges.
- It also covers green infrastructure for managing stormwater and land-use approaches that require or encourage private development to withstand flood impacts.
- The report says these approaches can be institutionalized and replicated in other communities and regions.
Key Findings
- Projects should be designed to deliver multiple community benefits and solve multiple community challenges.
- Achieving comprehensive resilience requires a long-term approach built out in phases as funds become available and climate impacts grow more severe.
- Multi-benefit projects need multiple funding sources, and federal agencies can help by aligning the administrative requirements of different funding streams, especially disaster recovery programs.
- Quantifying benefits requires funding for long-term monitoring.
Governance and Participation Lessons
- The report says regulators at all levels can analyze and reform regulatory barriers to innovative resilience projects.
- Enhancing resilience requires unprecedented coordination across jurisdictions, agencies and levels of government, at a scale that effectively reduces risks.
- Governments need to institutionalize resilience approaches so that private parties and public agencies implement them.
- Robust public participation can improve project design and develop community advocates.
Intended Use
- The report states that its hope is for local, state and federal decisionmakers to use the grantees' lessons to reform laws, policies and regulations where needed.
- The stated aim is to create easier pathways forward for innovative resilience projects.
Why It Matters for Rebuilding After Climate Disasters
- The report frames its lessons for officials at all levels of government designing and constructing infrastructure that enhances resilience and delivers multiple community benefits.
- It is addressed to local, state and federal decisionmakers, who are asked to use these lessons to shape policy reform for future resilience projects.