Background/Objectives

In 2022, AT&T, FEMA and Argonne National Laboratory launched the Climate Risk and Resilience Portal (ClimRR). ClimRR is open access and provides peer-reviewed climate datasets in a nontechnical format and puts high-resolution, forward-looking climate insights into the hands of those who need them most. As a means of demonstrating the value that this data can have for a community, AT&T and the Idaho Office of Emergency Management collaborated to incorporate ClimRR’s data into the Idaho Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP). Per FEMA guidelines, HMPs produced after April 2023 must include forward-looking climate data. As states work to incorporate climate projection in HMP updates, it is necessary to have not only success stories but also helpful roadmaps for including climate data in the hazard mitigation planning process.

Approach/Activities

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate how ClimRR data can be used to inform decisions in a real-world situation. We do this by collaborating with the state of Idaho to identify gaps in their current HMP, with the goal of fulfilling the new FEMA requirement as well as provide meaningful information to stakeholders. Specifically, we analyzed all data layers within ClimRR, including a range of possible climate scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), and distilled these results into an ArcGIS StoryMap targeted for the state of Idaho.  Planners were then able to use this product to evaluate future climate projections, export maps and figures, and make use of prepared text contextualizing changing risks.

The data from ClimRR and user-generated summaries helped to inform key sections of Idaho’s updated HMP, including its identification of future hazard risks. For instance, while drought impacts are expected to generally increase under climate change, ClimRR’s information helped to identify areas of greatest expected change. In turn, these findings will help implementers of Idaho’s plan target risk reduction and resources to areas of greatest need. All results of the study, including the StoryMap, were included in the plan’s appendix.

Results/Lessons Learned

This implementation case study finds that FEMA’s new HMP requirements increase the importance of having freely accessible, high-quality climate data, such as that on ClimRR. Many states do not have access to meaningful assessments of future climate conditions; instead, these states have traditionally relied upon high-level, qualitative summaries of how a changing climate will impact hazards. We show that high-resolution climate data can help prepare for a range of possible futures and provide information to help target mitigation actions to areas of greatest climate risk.

This project demonstrates the usefulness of ClimRR data in state and local HMPs as well as the importance of translating climate data into application-specific contexts, in this case the exacerbation of existing hazards. More broadly, we present a framework to help jurisdictions use free, high-resolution climate data in the hazard identification portion of their HMP.