Description:

Weather- and climate-related events increasingly pose a threat to infrastructure, the economy, health, and other sectors, but our infrastructure and efforts are focused primarily on near-term event preparedness and response. The billions of dollars available under disaster frameworks continue to present both opportunities and barriers for a robust focus on long-term planning horizons and adaptation to extreme weather and climate change. Communities face challenges planning for long-term climatic change in a world that is driven by short-term political, social, and financial incentives. Additional obstacles include varying levels of vulnerability, uneven distribution of resources, and limited capacity to address these issues.

A vast amount of data and tools are available, but more work is needed to engage and assist communities and decision makers with integrating climate information into planning and decision-making processes and coproducing knowledge and resources. Doing so can increase the impact of planning efforts and better support climate-informed, action-oriented planning that increases capacity and community resilience. This session welcomes submissions that exemplify progress in this area, such as, but not limited to:

• Case studies that integrate climate information into municipal or regional planning (e.g., hazard mitigation plans, climate adaptation plans)
• Reforming ideas for short-term disaster policy to better incorporate long-term perspectives
• Assisting communities in making climate-informed decisions
• Community engagement methods related to long-term planning
• Coproduction of knowledge, tools, and research related to these topics
• Climate justice, equity, and transformative systems change
• Expanding community capacity to adapt to climate change
• Building sustained relationships with decision makers
• Learning from multi-generational traditional climate knowledge