Adaptation Planning Frameworks / Toolkits

Gulf TREE was created to fulfill the need for guidance in climate tool selection. Stakeholders such as natural resource managers and community planners who understood the importance of incorporating climate resiliency into their projects struggled to find the right tool - the daunting process can be time-consuming, overwhelming, and very confusing.

Temperate is designed to help cities move through the process of climate change adaptation planning, including exploring climate hazards, creating vulnerability assessments, and crafting action plans. Using available temperature and precipitation climate projections for the user's location, Temperate will suggest potential future climate hazards that may be of significance. After exploring potential hazards, Temperate walks users through assessing each hazard's possible impact on various community systems.

The Massachusetts Wildlife Climate Action Tool is designed to inform and inspire local action to protect the Commonwealth’s natural resources in a changing climate. It was developed for local decision-makers, conservation practitioners, large landowners, and community leaders across the state. 

With this tool, you can:

Nature offers a powerful set of tools for addressing hazards like flooding and erosion. Nature-based solutions use natural systems, mimic natural processes, or work in tandem with traditional approaches to address these specific hazards. Communities across the country— along rivers or coasts, large or small, rural or urban— can incorporate nature-based solutions in local planning, zoning, regulations, and built projects to help reduce their exposure to flood and erosion impacts.

The purpose of this toolkit is to analyze common trends in the approaches various cities are taking to planning, implementing, and funding green infrastructure to manage stormwater. The toolkit is intended to aid local governments nationwide in comparing best practices across cities, drawing lessons from different approaches, and crafting similar policies for their own jurisdictions.

States and communities around the country have begun to prepare for the climate changes that are already underway.  This planning process typically results in a document called an adaptation plan.  

This Tribal Climate Resilience Resource Guide (TCRRG) was developed by the Climate Subgroup of the White House Council on Native American Affairs to provide federal government-wide resources for tribes and climate in a standard framework. Each of the 567 federally-recognized Tribes can visit their Tribal Fact Sheet "Climate Dashboard" to learn about federal agencies and programs that may assist them to build resilience, whether to manage disasters, relocate, contend with shifting subsistence species, mitigate the human causes of climate change, or address other climate impacts on lifeways.

To mitigate hazards and risks, the Resilience Roadmap offers comprehensive guidance for federal, state, and local entities to effectively convene at the regional level for adaptable and holistic planning. This multi-jurisdictional approach requires major cooperation across boundaries, considerable reliance on partnerships and multi-agency collaborations, and significant utilization of interdisciplinary teams.

Step-by-Step Process

To constructively lead intergovernmental planning efforts with tangible outputs, follow these steps in order:

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA's) Climate Change & Extreme Weather Vulnerability Assessment Framework is a guide and collection of resources for use in analyzing the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on transportation infrastructure. Its purpose is to identify key considerations, questions, and resources that can be used to design and implement a climate change vulnerability assessment.