Municipalities in the Great Lakes Region are already experiencing the effects of climate change – from flooding, to extreme temperatures, to winter storms, to high winds, Great Lakes cities are at different stages of preparedness for extreme weather associated with climate change.
Through a collaboration with AECOM, the City of Gary and University of Michigan’s Great Lakes Integrated Science and Assessment office (GLISA), the Cities Initiative has developed the Climate Ready Infrastructure and Strategic Sites Protocol (CRISSP), which relies on available data and municipal staff’s own knowledge of their facilities and infrastructure to assess their assets’ vulnerability to extreme weather in a way that is both relatively quick and low-cost.
The CRISSP guides your municipality through a step-by-step process to assemble your CRISSP team, gather relevant information on hazards and climate data, identify municipal infrastructure, facilities and sites located in extreme weather hazard zones, and perform a vulnerability assessment on them. A key aspect of the CRISSP is a helpful, easy to use Risk Matrix tool that takes users through a series of critical questions to assess the vulnerability of municipal facilities, sites or infrastructure.
To access the CRISSP and Risk Matrix, see the links below.