The Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and JPMorgan Chase launch the US climate resilience map: Pathways for city solutions

The Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) today launched the US Climate Resilience Map: A Pathway for City Solutions. This new, publicly available online tool is the first-of-its-kind to map both climate risk and social vulnerability across the United States, arming city leaders and community members with census tract-level understanding and visualization of local climate risks and success stories of communities that built resilience to those risks.

Developed with support from JPMorgan Chase, this national map includes six indicators of temperature, land, and water climate risk and fifteen social indicators spanning socioeconomic, housing, disability, and minority status factors that exacerbate these risks. The US Climate Resilience Map also highlights successful, on-the-ground resilience interventions to address and reduce the impact of ever-increasing incidents of flood, wildfire, drought, extreme precipitation, and extreme heat in 10 cities across the continental United States – Norfolk, VA, Los Angeles, CA, Charlotte, NC, New York, NY, New Orleans, LA, Seattle, WA, San Antonio, TX, Tucson, AZ, Boulder, CO, and Louisville, KY – that can be replicated by similarly at-risk states and cities. US Climate Resilience Map users can click on Seattle, WA, for example, to learn how the city famously known for its heavy rainfall has successfully implemented its RainWise program to help homeowners reduce their risk to flooding; or Louisville, KY, to learn how the city with the fastest-growing urban heat island in the country is reducing its risk to extreme heat through an aggressive tree planting program. City officials, public utilities and other program partners might also benefit from the tool by using it to identify areas of greatest social vulnerability and make programmatic refinements – like deploying additional dual-language speakers to Seattle census tracts 100.01 and 91, with proportionally higher numbers of non-native English speakers, or doubling-down on efforts to pay for tree plantings in the economically depressed neighborhoods in Louisville census tracts 128.02 and 91.03. City decisionmakers and community members in virtually every county across the country can similarly use the tool to glean valuable insights into its climate risk and social vulnerabilities to develop and activate smarter climate resilience solutions.

“Climate risk is increasing across the United States and the world over, and those who are most vulnerable, and least responsible, will suffer the worst impacts” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, Director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) at the Atlantic Council.  “Arsht-Rock is committed to improving the lives of individuals by building human capacity for resilience. The US Climate Resilience Map will provide individuals and decision-makers with the information and tools they need to protect their community, people, and property and make their communities more resilient.”

“We’re pleased to be supporting The US Climate Resilience Map to help cities develop effective solutions to climate-related vulnerabilities. JPMorgan Chase is committed to collaborating with a diverse range of stakeholders to help create stronger communities that are both more inclusive and resilient to climate change.” said Marisa Buchanan, Global Head of Sustainability at JPMorgan Chase.

As part of its efforts to help advance a sustainable and inclusive economy, JPMorgan Chase has set a Paris-aligned financing commitment and a target to finance and facilitate $2.5 trillion for sustainable development in 10 years.

The US Climate Resilience Map: Pathways for City Solutions employs existing, open-source data collected from a variety of public sources between January 2000 and January 2021, including the CDC Social Vulnerability Index, maintained by the Geospatial Research, Analysis, and Services Program (GRASP), and the annual U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) – among others. Additionally, more than 300 interventions implemented across the United States in the same time period were examined to identify and highlight ten cities that have enacted the most successful, replicable resilience-building solutions.