A report by the Georgetown Climate Center provides an analysis of the lessons learned by the winners of the Rebuild by Design competition, a partnership between the Obama Administration and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The report discusses innovation shown by the winning projects for rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy. The winning projects demonstrate inventive approaches for rebuilding in ways that will make communities more resilient to future climate impacts and other environmental changes, as well as to social and economic stressors. Lessons can be learned from these projects about how these approaches can be institutionalized and replicated in other communities and regions across the nation.
The case studies detail how the state and local government recipients of the funding (State of New York, State of New Jersey, and City of New York) are working to transition from the innovative conceptual proposals developed during the competition to physical projects that can be implemented on the ground. These case studies explore how the grantees are navigating and overcoming legal and policy barriers as they work to implement these projects
The report describes ten key lessons, analyzed through the lens of the six grantees from the competition. Five of these lessons have, to a large extent, similar themes to a comment letter AMWA sent in 2014 to the White House State Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. These are: designing and encouraging projects that provide multiple benefits; aligning multiple streams of funding and administrative requirements; creating more flexibility in disaster recovery; encouraging coordination across agencies and levels of government; and encouraging with more funding availability, proactive disaster planning and mitigation.
The other lessons noted in the report are: recognizing that achieving comprehensive resilience will require a long-term approach; identifying additional funding sources to support long-term monitoring and maintenance; using lessons learned from project implementation to reform permitting; pursuing legal and policy mechanisms to institutionalize resilience approaches in public agencies and on private lands; and encourage robust public engagement processes and partnerships.