Coastal Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerabilities - Climate ...

Adaptation and Mitigation 103By initiating coastal adaptation planning, government agencies and local communitiesare educating themselves and others while building networks to share that knowledgeamong researchers, decision makers, and community members. One of the areas inwhich adaptation planning has been instrumental in expanding knowledge has been inthe assessment of vulnerabilities and risks associated with climate change. For example,the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary undertook a series of case studies to examinethe estuary’s vulnerability to climate change (Kreeger et al., 2011). Meanwhile, the Stateof New Jersey assessed the potential impacts of sea-level rise and coastal inundationfor the state’s coastline as well as the associated socio-economic impacts (Cooper et al.,2005). Similar assessments have been conducted for individual municipalities includingthe City of New York and the City of Punta Gorda, Florida (Beever et al., 2009; New YourCity Panel on Climate Change, 2010, also see Box 4.1).Assessments of vulnerability and risk are also emerging from individual utilities andinfrastructure managers. For example, as part of its adaptation planning, the City ofNew York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority assessed the potential impacts of climatechange to the agency’s infrastructure and operations (Jacob et al., 2008). Meanwhile,King County, Washington assessed the implications of sea-level rise for waste-watermanagement infrastructure (King County, 2008). Although the goals of adaptation planningare broader than a simple assessment of potential vulnerabilities and risks associatedwith climate change, such assessment activities are a key entry point for adaptationplanning. Accordingly, researchers and practitioners have contributed to the expansionof methods and tools for assessing coastal risk (also see Section 5.3).Emerging Planning PracticeAs adaptation planning has evolved, recognition has grown regarding the need for detailedinformation that is compatible with organizational decision-making processesand management systems. In recent years, progress has been made in the integration ofadaptation into spatial planning at the state, regional, and local levels. This has allowedadaptation planning to advance beyond the identification of potential policies and optionsto more practical explorations of those options at spatial scales relevant to decisionmakers; for example, Miami/Dade County has developed a series of spatial flood-riskand sea-level-rise visualizations. Increasingly, spatial planning is integrating informationon coastal risk with land-use planning; for example, regional planning agencies inPennsylvania (Linn, 2010), Georgia (Concannon et al., 2010), and Florida (Merritt, 2010)have collaborated with local governments to create maps depicting which lands are likelyto receive shore protection and which lands would be given up to the rising sea. TheNOAA Sea Grant programs have conducted similar efforts in New York (Tanski, 2010)and North Carolina (Clark & Kassakian, 2010). A spatial planning exercise conductedby the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) in Cape Cod, Massachusetts exploredmultiple scenarios of future development on the cape to explore interactionsamong coastal vulnerability, development, and maintenance of environmental amenity(U.S. DOT, 2011). Integrated approaches to spatial planning have also been applied inthe cities of Punta Gorda, Florida (Beever et al., 2009); New York, New York (New YorkCity Panel on Climate Change, 2010); and Boston, Massachusetts (Adaptation AdvisoryCommittee, 2011).