Project

Climate Vulnerability Assessments

Science-driven. Community-centered. Climate ready.

We conduct vulnerability assessments in collaboration with communities that seek to explore, understand, and document how climate change affects them. Through a community-engaged process, in-person site visits, and data creation and analysis that reflects each community’s unique context, we develop vulnerability assessments that can serve as guides for communities to inform their future climate adaptation, planning, prioritization, and awareness building efforts.

Our Process:

  • Develop partnerships with community leaders, municipal officials, and community-based organizations to ensure the assessment is grounded in community needs.
  • Synthesize community-identified priorities and climate concerns.
  • Assess community’s exposure to climate hazards.
  • Conduct an on-site investigation to understand asset, infrastructure, and resource vulnerability.
  • Calculate and characterize climate hazard impacts, including implications for vulnerable populations.
  • Provide communities with a peer-reviewed end product that can be used as a tool for informing adaptation actions.

The impacts of climate change will look different in every community. Our vulnerability assessments help cities and towns along the coast of Maine understand climate hazards and impacts in their community through a process informed by local voices and grounded in the best available science.

A climate vulnerability assessment is a type of analysis that seeks to identify and understand the impacts climate change has on a given community. These assessments consider a range of climate risks and social impacts, helping local decision-makers understand what community infrastructure will be affected and identify populations most at risk, thereby informing short-term emergency preparedness and long-term climate planning efforts.

GMRI brings real data to this necessary conversation, which is very valuable — particularly for sharing ongoing and future needs with our community.

Sarah White Tremont Sustainability Committee Member
climate vulnerability assessments flow chart

Our climate vulnerability assessments investigate an array of climate change impacts to community infrastructure and assets, placing these risks within the context of each community’s unique social and demographic characteristics. To develop these assessments, we examine and evaluate the specific risks rising sea levels and extreme weather pose to a given community.

We also look at how these problems connect to people's daily lives — both at home and at work. We do this by talking to people in the community and collecting qualitative data to learn about what challenges they might face and what opportunities they have in the future.

Our findings are comprehensively synthesized based on each community’s context, providing local decision-makers and community members with specialized information that can guide their climate and resilience planning efforts into the future.

Resilience in Action

Tremont's Quest for Resilience in a Changing Climate

Tremont's Quest for Resilience in a Changing Climate

Read on to learn more about what it takes to ensure coastal communities continue to thrive in a warmer world, and to see the role …

Perspectives|Aug 23, 2023

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