Western Adaptation Alliance Full Proposal Urban Sustainability Directors Network

Western Adaptation Alliance Full Proposal | Urban Sustainability Directors Network

RFP for Regional Networks: Collaboration Projects in Adaptation/Resilience

1.Project Summary:The Western Adaptation Alliance proposes a project designed to help regional network members better communicate with key constituencies within their communities to broaden support for more robust action on climate adaptation and to provide a concise set of responses for the highest priority area of concern in the region – extreme heat events. Specifically, WAA is proposing to develop narratives around the five impacts of greatest concern to the 13 Alliance communities: temperature extremes, stormwater/floods, drought, fire, and wind. These narratives will be developed after inventorying major extreme events across the region and the specific actions taken following those event to reduce future disaster risk. This inventory of past experience will be correlated with existing assessments of future hazards driven by increasing climate variability and change across the region. The resulting narrative kits for each of the “big 5” impacts will be configurable by each WAA member with locally relevant history. Finally, the proposed project will result in a toolkit for the highest priority of the “big 5” impacts – extreme heat events. Project products will be shared with practitioners within the WAA region and across the USDN network.

2.Participating communities include (USDN associate members are indicated by an asterisk*): Aspen, CO; Boulder, CO; Boulder County, CO*; Denver, CO; El Paso, TX; Flagstaff, AZ; Fort Collins, CO; ; Las Cruces, NM; Las Vegas, NV; Park City, UT*; Phoenix, AZ; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Fe, NM and Tucson, AZ.

3.Grant Amount Requested:$39,900

4.Project Purpose: The proposed project will accomplish three primary activities in service to the network’s core purpose, “building resilient Western communities.” First, the project will help inform the communications of WAA members as they increase their efforts to build adaptive capacity and community resilience within their respective communities. Second, the project will bolster the WAA as a network by building a regionally coherent narrative that underscores the importance of networked collaboration within and among the region’s major cities. Finally, the proposed project will create and pilot a framework for primary solution sets for the principal climate risks faced by the WAA region.

5.The primary products of the project include:

Product 1: A extreme weather/climate event inventory, reviewing the last 50 years of recorded natural hazard events with the goal of:

• Identifying the “iconic” extreme events (of the “big five hazards”) for each of the 13 communities and documenting the financial impact(s) of each, and
• documenting any risk reduction activities that resulted and summarizing the efficacy of these activities, to the extent possible,

Product 2: Five Regional Impacts Narrative Kits (temperature extremes, stormwater/floods, drought, fire, and wind) from which WAA communities can develop locally relevant but regionally integrated communications products about climate variability and change in the American West. The kits will enable the easy production of talking points, PowerPoint slides, printed information sheets and online web content around each of the big five hazards. These toolkits will be informed by key insights in climate communications research.

Product 3: a Toolkit of Promising Practices for Extreme Temperature outlining assessment and planning approaches, templates, local interventions, partnering opportunities, and funding resources specifically for city practitioners.

6.Project Value & Feasibility: During a WAA strategic planning retreat in early December 2013, members unanimously agreed that communications with elected officials, senior managers and key community stakeholders is the primary barrier preventing them from taking the next steps in reducing vulnerabilities and building adaptive capacity. Drawing on their collective expertiseas veteran urban sustainability directors, Alliance members feel they will be able to develop narratives that fold climate considerationsinto locally relevant and heartfelt stories. Current climate communications in the region tend to focus on scientific models and climate projections. Alliance member believe communications need to be less about “gloom and doom” and should focus rather on the history of community strength demonstrated by the response to past extreme events, underscoring the solutions that are available to communities now, and benefits of proactively working together.[1] Given the experience of the WAA members and the quality of the many partnerships the WAA has fostered over the past three years, the Alliance is quite confident that this project can be accomplished on time and on budget.

7.Key Tasks Involved: Product 1 (extreme weather/climate event inventory) activities include:

• Developing data collection and reporting methodology to gather needed information for major natural hazard events, damages reported, emergency response & recovery procedures used, and lessons learned, among others.
• Collecting relevant information via desk research and interviews of key informants.
• Compilingan inventory of major natural hazard events that have occurred in WAA network municipalities from 1960 to the present.

Product 2 (Five”Big Impacts” Regional Impacts Narrative Kits) activities include:

• Interview WAA members to determine priority means of communications to be addressed by the Narrative Kits
• Interviewing core and associate members of the regional network as well as key stakeholders outside of the network to uncover lessons learned related to effective approaches for engaging diverse audiences around climate preparedness.
• Review the climate communications literature for insights applicable to the task.
• Develop the kits in iterative fashion with WAA members.

Product 3 (Toolkit of Promising Practices for Extreme Temperature) activities include:

• Collecting relevant information via desk research and interviews of key informants.
• Reviewing planning templates, tools and approaches extant in the practice literature.
• Writing and formatting the final deliverable (in electronic form)

8.Project Management: The grant recipient will be the City of Las Vegas on behalf of the Western Adaptation Alliance. Tom Perrigo will serve as project manager to disburse grant funds to support the tasks outlined under the grant. Tom will work closely with the Finance Committee of the Western Adaptation Alliance to oversee work planning, selection of contractors to complete the proposed tasks, and quality control for deliverables. The Alliance has not yet determined which entity may be best suited to complete to proposed tasks, but is currently consulting with the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the Sonoran Institute and others to determine the best fits for expertise, value for available funding, and the availability of staff capacity to provide services.

9.Progress Measurement: Describe how the team will track progress and evaluate success

Upon award should this proposal be funded, the WAA Finance Committee will select contractors who will be tasked with either one or both of the two tasks. Upon selection, the contractors will be required to submit project plans and bi-monthly project update reports in time for the regular WAA teleconference throughout the duration of the project. Project evaluation will be based upon the utility of the narratives as determined by the WAA network members. Upon conclusion of the project, the WAA Finance Committee (with ISC assistance) will circulate a survey to the WAA members requesting their assessment of the delivered materials.

10.Project Budget: $39,900 as follows:

Product 1: Extreme weather/climate event inventory:

• Assumed level of effort:
• Project Manager @ $100/hr for 50 hours
• Research/Program Assistant @ $25/hr for 400 hours
• Sub-cost: $15,000

Product 2: Five Regional Impacts Narrative Kits

• Assumed level of effort:
• Project Manager @ $100/hr for 40 hours
• Communications Specialist @ $100/hr for 80 hours
• Research/Program Assistant @ $25/hr for 320 hours
• Sub-cost: $20,000

Product 3: Toolkit of Promising Practices for Extreme Temperature

• Project Manager @ $100/hr for 24 hours 2400
• Research/Program Assistant @ $25/hr for 100 hours

• Sub-cost: $4,900

11.Timeline (12 months or less)

Mar / Apr / May / Jun / Jul / Aug / Sep / Oct / Nov / Dec / Jan / Feb
Task 1: Define Data Collection Parameters
Deliverable 1: Interview Guide
Task 2: Extreme event/intervention data collection
Deliverable 2: City Extreme Event History Summaries (13)
Task 3: Development of the five “big impacts” narrative kits
Deliverable 3: five “big impact” narrative kits
Task 4: Development of the Extreme Heat Tool Kit
Deliverable 4: Extreme Heat Tool Kit
Task 5: Dissemination of results, project close-out, evaluation

12.Description of the Commitment of Participating Project Members to Use the Outcomes/Products of the Project: In January 2014, core members of the WAA ratified a regional network governance structure developed during the December 2013 retreat. As part of this network formalization process, network members have committed to engaging in collaborative project work as well as sharing promising practices and lessons learned with the rest of the network. In formulating the scope of this proposed project, the 13 members of the WAA were unanimous in support of this concept as the highest priority. In particular, individual WAA members are committed as follows:

• Boulder County commits to drawing from the compiledmaterial to guide adaptation efforts. The county is particularly interested in the extremetemperature tool and promises to use the information gathered to support local efforts
• Denver will commit to using the extreme heat tool kit to guide actions and communications via implementing 2 priority recommendations;
• Phoenix will use the impact narrative kit in developing communications with city staff, the local community, and elected officials.
• Salt Lake City will commit to reviewing and implementing recommendations specifically from the flooding and drought toolkits

13.Potential to Benefit Many Regional Network Members: While this project meets a specific need identified by the WAA network in a fashion particular to our region, we suspect that other USDN members face similar communications challenges within their respective communities. Also, through our communications with neighboring cities within our region, many of the WAA members have engaged in conversations with neighboring jurisdictions about the need for stronger communications regarding climate adaptation needs, and the potential to leverage recent events in the region. We believe that the grant outputs of the proposed project could serve as a model for use by other practitioners (with local tailoring required) and could even help standardize the approach by which cities can categorize and index climate-related events.

14.Explanation of how the project will engage/benefit other members of the regional network

All WAA network members will participate in the project by offering input on the development of the research interview guide, facilitating the data collection process within their communitiesand then tailoring and using the communications guidance to present a unified message about the role of climate change adaptation in building resilient Western communities. Each of the products proposed have been designed to create value for all members of the WAA regional network, as well as communities across the American West. The project will engage all members of the WAA regional network and was developed so as to create value for all 13 core member communities. Our goal is to use this project to deepen and strengthen the Alliance network, involving associate WAA members—from subject matter experts and sector leaders in the process of articulating adaptation and resilience best practices.

15.Description of if and how the project will involve social equity: Extreme events of any kindtend to have a disproportionate impact on under-resourced and marginalized members of the community. These vulnerabilities may be due to inequalities in the distribution of community assetsor they may reflect limited opportunities for economic security. The proposed project will attempt to determine differential impacts associated with past events and interventions (limited by the available historic data). Within our communities, low income and minority populations tend to live in areas subject to floods, are more vulnerable to extreme weather as these populations tend to more frequently live in sub-standard housing without adequate cooling, and can’t afford the higher energy, water, and food costs expected as a result of climate change. Further, the extreme heat product proposed here, is very likely to have a direct social equity benefit as local research has indicated strong correlations between urban heat islands and relatively low income areas within WAA communities.

16.Plan for Sustaining the Project: The proposed project represents the “joint production” of materials for use by WAA members (and available to non-WAA members in the region and across the USDN network) that Alliance members hope will expand in the future. Many of the processes developed for this project will build on the existing WAA governance framework and expand the capacity for additional joint efforts in the future.

17.How project outcomes will be disseminated: The proposed project outputs will be immediately available to WAA members, other western city/county staff and other USDN members for their use in communicating to key constituencies and will increase the collective knowledge of climate-related events for communities across the region. Project outputs will be posted to the USDN website for use by other members, provided to individual WAA members for distribution to their neighboring municipalities through local networks, and shared with other western cities via other existing networks such as Carpe Diem West and Sonoran’s rural western cities network. Phoenix will also share the developed products with regional communities through ASU's Sustainable Communities Network. With the consent of the WAA, ISC will disseminate these materials and lessons learned through its national network of local government sustainability practitioners and via the Communications Affinity Group of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (currently being “incubated” at ISC).

18.Contact: Tom Perrigo, Chief Sustainability Officer, City of Las Vegas; ; (702) 229-2127

[1]See, for instance, Dan Kahan at Why we are poles apart on climate change, 488 Nature 255 (2012)