The Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX) and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) recently released the Best Practices Manual for Development in Coastal Louisiana website.

What’s novel about this site is that it provides strategies for creating sustainable and resilient coastal communities based on “geotypes” (pick from chenier plain, alluvium, upper riverbanks, middle riverbanks, lower riverbanks, or coastal delta: map for where these are in Louisiana here).

While the geotypes aren’t found everywhere, many of the recommendations on the site are relevant not only for other parts of the Gulf of Mexico, but for coastal areas around the country. Definitely worth a look.

Best Practices Manual for Development in Coastal Louisiana website.

For details (including the link to visit the webinar), see the event’s page on StormSmart Connect.

If your community has any Corps projects, you’ll definitely want to have a quick skim (it’s shorter than it looks: most of the important stuff is in the first few pages, though you may want to dive into some of the appendices), and even if you don’t, it provides a good example of a methodical way to approach a complex issue.

A freeboard success story from FEMA:

Gail Cunningham Coen of Westport wishes that people would realize how easy it is to elevate your flood-prone house, especially when the Long Island Sound is just feet from your front door. “We didn’t even take the pictures off the wall,” Coen said, referring to the elevation of her home in 1994. “It took 3 days to jack it up, 3 days to build the foundation, and 3 days to lower it back down.”

After flooding destroyed her first floor in 1992, she decided she’d had enough of Mother Nature’s fury. Coen registered with the town for a grant through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) to help pay half the cost of elevating her home.

The rest of the article is here. You can read up about freeboard here.

“Hazard mitigation is very important and there’s a lot of value in looking at past events, but we know with climate change that we can’t use the past to project what the future will be like. For example, the flood that a community used to experience every 100 years may now be the 20-year flood.”

Nice Coastal Services Magazine article on Lewes, Delaware, where the city (with help from ICLEI and Delaware Sea Grant) successfully merged climate change adaptation into their hazard mitigation planning. One participant called it a “win-win, no-regrets strategy.” I expect we’ll be seeing a lot efforts like this in the future.

The webinar covered the joint engineering guidance provided by the IBHS FORTIFIED for Existing Homes program and FEMA’s Wind Retrofit Guide, both of which were introduced in 2010 with the focus on the best practices for retrofitting existing residential structures to resist forces from high winds and the entry of wind-driven water associated with hurricanes.

You can download the video here, but beware, it’s not for the faint of bandwidth: it’s 174MB (IBHS: can you post it to YouTube or Vimeo, please?)

Here’s what FEMA has to say about it:

The 2011 CCM, 4th Ed. (FEMA P-55), is a 2-volume publication that provides a comprehensive approach to planning, siting, designing, constructing, & maintaining homes in the coastal environment. Volume I provides information about hazard identification, siting decisions, regulatory requirements, economic implications, & risk management. The primary audience for Volume I is design professionals, officials, & those involved in the decision-making process. Volume II contains in-depth descriptions of design, construction, & maintenance practices that, when followed, will increase the durability of residential buildings in the harsh coastal environment and reduce economic losses associated with coastal natural disasters. The primary audience for Volume II is the design professional who is familiar with building codes & standards & has a basic understanding of engineering principles.

I haven’t had a chance to read through it yet, but a quick glance shows a number of updated illustrations and photos and some new content. I’m looking forward to reading more as soon as I have a few spare hours or days.

(From Climate Communication)

We are pleased to announce the release of the first edition of the National Preparedness Goal, which is available for download at http://www.fema.gov/PPD8. The National Preparedness Goal is the first deliverable called for by Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8 and was signed by the Secretary of Homeland Security on September 23, 2011.

The National Preparedness Goal sets the vision for preparedness nationwide and identifies the core capabilities and capability targets necessary to achieve that vision across the five mission areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response and recovery.

The first edition of the National Preparedness Goal builds extensively on prior work of various stakeholder groups from around the nation, draws upon lessons learned from past large-scale and catastrophic events and represents input from preparedness partners from all levels of government, non-profit organizations, the private sector and individuals. The input and ideas developed through working groups, outreach sessions, targeted engagement efforts and a two-week national review period was critical to shaping this document.

As one reader pointed out, “Proof is in the pudding of course, but at least this piece includes mitigation — with community resilience called out as a [desired] core capability.”

Here’s to hoping that words lead to action.

Coastal CHARM (Community Health And Resource Management)

You can read more about it on the Texas AgriLife Extension Service site.

[UPDATE] More Videos

(thanks, Heather Wade).