General 5 — Regional Climate Action Roadmap and Toolkit

Resilient Infrastructure and Communities

Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Solutions

Conventional roofs absorb heat, making hot days hotter for those in a building. Light roofs reflect that heat, cooling the interior. Vegetated roofs also cool buildings while absorbing rain water.

The dangers of hard and heavy rain can be reduced with systems that capture water in the ground, whether they are mechanical or natural.

Solar-storage systems are becoming more affordable and should be a priority for first responders, essential service providers and community institutions such as libraries and social service providers.

Resilience is about much more than technology. Improvement is needed in making computers and other technology, as well as internet service, affordable and accessible to all. Developing systems for communicating during emergencies is also critical. Everyone needs to think like a first responder.

Resilience hubs serve their communities by bringing together many functions: supporting residents, creating communication networks, distributing resources, and reducing carbon pollution. Through all of these actions, and by creating the new community networks necessary to take action, resilience hubs improve the quality of life.

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Regional Strategy

Extreme heat, flooding, stresses on public health and natural systems – all these require a response that is extensive and widespread, at a scale and level of comprehensiveness that is hard even to imagine. Government is working hard to help towns deal with flood risks, extreme heat and weather emergencies. But the need goes far beyond what government alone can do. It requires new levels of organization and collaboration that are only beginning to be imagined. Promising new structures include the Flood Resilience Network coordinated by Sea Grant, the NYS Adaptation Practitioners Network, and an initiative to create “resilience hubs” at public libraries, with leadership from the Mid-Hudson and Ramapo-Catskill Library Associations. As flooding, extreme weather and heat impact everyone in every neighborhood, a model for climate resilience-building is needed that is – somehow - both decentralized and well coordinated.

To begin, a resource network should be created to promote collaborative planning and projects at the neighborhood scale, and develop a model for doing so. It should aim to build a small team for outreach, education and project development. Its work should be to:

provide widespread, politically neutral education on climate change impacts and preparedness/ response;
work with community organizations for rapid establishment of micro-grids, cooling centers, rain gardens and other physical measures to improve climate safety; and on communications systems for emergency warning and response that can reach into communities inclusively;
develop funding to implement those physical measures.
monitor the emergence of opportunities for job-creation and small business development from this activity, and work with economic development agencies and investors to develop a program that nurtures these industries.

This coalition will convene organizations working in this space, with the goal of designing such a program and getting it funded for at least three years of operation.

Who Cares? A Partial List of Stakeholders:

Cornell Climate Adaptive Design Studio

https://cals.cornell.edu/water-resources-institute/watersheds/hudson-river-estuary/climate-change/climate-adaptive-design-process/cad-studio-phase-i

Federal Emergency Management Agency

https://www.fema.gov/

Future of Small Cities Institute

https://www.futureofsmallcities.org

Hudson River Flood Resilience Network

https://cals.cornell.edu/water-resources-institute/watersheds/hudson-river-estuary/climate-change/helping-communities/flood-resilience-network

Groundwork Hudson Valley Climate Safe Neighborhoods Program

https://www.groundworkhv.org/programs/transforming-places/climate-safe-neighborhoods/

Institute for Disaster Mental Health