Coastal Programs and Resilience Planning

What is Resilience Planning?

Resilience planning is the development and implementation of measures to enable coastal communities to plan for and bounce back from coastal changes and hazards. Resilience planning incorporates both adaptation and mitigation objectives and measures that have distinct purposes and benefits.

Adaptation is the implementation of measures to enable coastal communities to change with the changing coasts.
Mitigation is the implementation of measures to minimize the impacts on coastal communities of future change and specifically coastal hazards.

Role of State and Territory Coastal Programs

The 34 State and Territory Coastal Zone Management (CZM) Programs are leaders in the development and implementation of coastal adaptation, mitigation, and resilience strategies. CZM Programs are on the ground to support communities at every step along the path to resilience. They have the flexibility to operate across multiple levels of government and are uniquely positioned to link cutting-edge federal data and tools with local communities to address coastal changes and hazards.

Resilience Planning: A Four Step Process

Assess Risks and Vulnerabilities – identify coastal hazards including inundation and flooding, erosion, and coastal storms, and areas that are vulnerable to these hazards
Identify Solutions and Make a Plan – identify social, economic, and ecological methods for reducing the impacts of these risks and make a plan for implementation
Implement Actions – implement priority solutions to reduce coastal risks
Monitor and Measure Effectiveness – observe and measure whether the solutions successfully reduce risk and evaluate needed changes