Community Solutions for Fire, Flood and a Hot World

As climate change accelerates, low-income communities and communities of color will bear the greatest impacts from fires, floods, hurricanes and heat. We need new frameworks for disaster preparedness and resilience, led by these communities in partnership with policymakers and experts.

The Challenge

Separate disasters

in damages

$92B

28

2023 shattered records with 28 separate billion-dollar climate disasters in the United States, costing over $92 billion in damages and countless lives disrupted. Traditional disaster response frameworks often fail to center community needs and leadership, leading to recoveries that can deepen rather than heal historic inequities.

Our Approach

We're building new frameworks for community-centered disaster preparedness, response, and recovery through collaborative research and strategy development. By bringing together community leaders, policymakers, and researchers, we're documenting what works, identifying systemic barriers, and developing solutions that put community resilience at the center of climate adaptation.

Program Initiatives

Community-Led Disaster Recovery

We study and support innovative models where communities lead their own recovery efforts, documenting best practices and developing frameworks for more equitable disaster response. Our research examines how community organizations can effectively partner with government agencies while maintaining decision-making power and ensuring equitable distribution of resources.

Insurance and Risk Management Innovation

Through analysis of evolving insurance markets and disaster risk management policies, we're exploring new models that better serve vulnerable communities. This includes examining community-based insurance approaches, studying barriers to coverage in high-risk areas, and developing policy recommendations for more equitable risk management.

Building Local Resilience

We aim to work with communities to develop proactive strategies for climate resilience, focusing on infrastructure planning, emergency preparedness, and adaptive capacity building. This includes documenting community-led adaptation initiatives and creating tools for local climate risk assessment and planning.