BATON ROUGE, La. (June 15, 2022) – Today, the City of Mobile announced the selection of The Water Institute of the Gulf and partners to develop a Resilience Assessment and Plan for the city.
With partners Volkert, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, Ephriam Environmental, LLC, Waggonner & Ball, and Moffatt & Nichol, The Water Institute will be leading an 18-month process to evaluate the risks the city faces, potential strategies to mitigate for those risks and help guide stakeholders through a Structured Decision-Making (SDM) process. The SDM process helps guide decision-makers through discussions and prioritization to allow better clarity in complicated situations and help city leaders and stakeholders develop the plan that fits their specific needs.
The City of Mobile is undertaking the development of a Resilience Assessment and Plan to ensure resilience is integrated city-wide into project and program decision-making to be better prepared for, and able to quickly bounce back from, the impacts associated with a changing climate, sea level rise and varying social and economic conditions.
“We are looking to the future so we can be proactive instead of reactive to the challenges our community will face in the coming years and decades,” Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson said. “Working with The Water Institute and its partners will help us collect important data and make a plan to incorporate long-term resiliency into City operations. No matter what the future brings, we want Mobile and Mobilians to be ready.”
The risk assessment portion of the planning will include four parts: Gathering data related to climate, sea-level rise, social and economic projections for the city; defining the city’s risks; identifying what the city can accept as risk and how much damage are associated with those risks; and an audit of the city’s existing policies, plans and programs. Using this information, The Water Institute and its partners will help city leaders and community members work through a process to determine potential strategies that will make the city more resilient to change and challenges over the next 30 to 50 years.
“The strategies that will come out of this planning work will be developed with the community and city leaders to fit the city’s unique needs and values,” said Colleen McHugh, The Water Institute planner leading the resilience plan work. “Our team will bring to Mobile lessons we’ve learned from working with communities across the Gulf Coast to understand, prepare for and adapt to risks they face. We’ll work with Mobile’s residents to identify strategies to be safer from storms and other hazards in the future, while at the same time improving health, quality of life and access to economic opportunity for all residents.”
The final Resilience Plan will include localized climate and sea level rise projections, expected social and economic changes, the potential risks to the city, what infrastructure, services and other assets need to be protected and findings from the city program audit. In addition, the final plan will include a roadmap for future projects, policies and funding potentials in order to allow the City of Mobile to move toward a more sustainable and secure future.
Read the City of Mobile’s release here.
About The Water Institute of the Gulf
The Water Institute of the Gulf is an independent, non-profit, applied research institution advancing science and developing integrated methods to solve complex environmental and societal challenges. We believe in and strive for more resilient and equitable communities, sustainable environments, and thriving economies. For more information, visit www.thewaterinstitute.org.