Conferences and Learning

Thriving in a Changing Climate: Proactive Planning Strategies

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Course Details

A changing climate is an increasingly important consideration for planners because it affects the very fabric of the environments they design and manage. Rising seas, shifting precipitation patterns, and more frequent extreme events disrupt infrastructure, threaten public health, and challenge economic and social resilience. Planners must integrate climate considerations into strategies for urban development, transportation, housing, and natural resource management.

This presentation centers on ensemble-based flood-scenario modeling — a best practice for integrating predictive science into planning. By capturing a range of plausible futures, this flexible, data-driven framework helps planners assess infrastructure vulnerabilities, prioritize adaptation, and advance equitable resilience strategies. While flooding is the focus of the case study, hazards such as extreme heat and wildfire can also be considered using a similar methodology, broadening its application to diverse planning contexts.

Using a Florida city as an example, presenters demonstrate how forward-looking flood scenarios informed a vulnerability assessment of critical assets, identified sensitivity across infrastructure systems, and created focus areas for proactive policy and investment. Leave with actionable methods for embedding climate science into planning workflows, protecting vulnerable populations, and designing resilient, livable built environments that can adapt to multiple climate threats.

Learning Outcomes

  • Understand how spatial modeling of climate hazards supports best practices in resilience, enabling planners to assess exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to remain equitable and robust in the face of uncertain futures.
  • Apply scenario-planning methods to prioritize adaptation investments that protect vulnerable people and places, embed equity into resilience standards, and translate predictive modeling into actionable policy and infrastructure decisions.
  • Integrate community and stakeholder engagement into project development to ensure final focus areas and priorities balance public input, steering committee guidance, and data-driven climate resilience strategies.