El Niño is strengthening, increasing risks from floods, drought and extreme heat. With 2027 projected by some sources to be the hottest year on record, how should communities prepare for the next year – and the next decade – as extreme weather becomes more common?
Community-centered solutions are essential, speakers said at Climate Week NYC. Yet resilience planning often still depends on heroic effort and a scramble for funding. The challenge is to make preparation strategic, routine and sustained.
Those questions shaped more than 25 events hosted or attended by Duke scholars during Climate Week, including three panels focused on how communities can prepare for extreme weather and disasters. The conversations examined resilience from several angles: the role of universities, the financing needed to turn plans into projects and the state policies that can remove barriers.
Toddi Steelman, Duke’s vice president and vice provost for climate and sustainability, moderated the university-focused panel. “Universities are catalyzers for programs and projects. There is a role for universities in terms of coalition building, community engagement and data sharing,” she said.
Universities as Partners
Amy Chester of Rebuild by Design shared that between 2011 and 2024, 99.5% of congressional districts experienced at least one federally declared major disaster caused by extreme weather. The organization’s Atlas of Accountability maps disaster declarations and post-disaster assistance obligations by county, providing information communities can use in resilience planning. After Hurricane Ida, Rebuild by Design helped launch Rainproof NYC, an initiative that helps New Yorkers prepare for increasingly heavy rainfall. The organization is also partnering with New York University to expand the work.
Extreme heat, flooding and fire have caused recent fatalities in Colorado, while drought in the Colorado River basin has reached critical levels. Courtney Schultz of Colorado State University described the university’s work with communities through the Colorado Climate Center, which provides monitoring, research, data and services. Schultz said the center has built a network of people who use its data and engage with communities on adaptation.
At Drexel University, Mathy Stanislaus said the Environmental Collaboratory works directly with communities to develop climate-justice-centered solutions and best practices. “We ask: what are you experiencing and what are the gaps?” Stanislaus said. The collaboratory shares principles with communities and creates data-sovereignty agreements. With record temperatures projected for 2027, communities have only months to prepare, Stanislaus said. “There is a disproportionate risk for vulnerable populations.”
Heather Navarro, director of the Midwest Climate Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis, described the network’s work across 12 Midwestern states. Through one program, a postdoctoral researcher attends local health events and community gatherings to learn what residents see as their most pressing concerns. “Now we can say we know there is a community interested in this issue,” Navarro said. “[Resilience] is an all-of-government, all-of-society issue.”
Financing Resilience
The second panel, moderated by Duke Climate Leader in Residence Victoria Salinas, focused on how communities can finance resilience.
“We heard the importance of communities understanding risk at a whole new level. Communities know what they need to do,” Salinas said, pointing to a new finance guidebook for local governments.
Brigid Shea of ICLEI described community fire drills designed to help residents prepare for extreme and deadly weather. The drills made people feel safer while helping neighbors get to know one another. She also explained how NOAA Atlas 14, based on 25 years of rainfall data, changed floodplain maps and restricted development in newly identified flood-risk areas.
Shea cited additional tools, including Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing and public improvement districts. These tools can support projects such as water recycling, improved wildfire evacuation access and affordable housing requirements. In one example, a car wash near Austin, Texas began using reclaimed water through a purple-pipe system – significant water savings.
Mason Hess of the New York City Mayor’s Office said resilience work should be framed in terms people can understand: lives saved, property protected, safer communities and jobs created. NYC’s Climate Strong Communities program is working borough by borough. Hess advised communities to keep project plans ready so they can move quickly when funding becomes available. “We now know where the issues are—and we can show investors we have thought about this and we can show the need,” he said.
Mike Brown of the Climate Bonds Initiative shared updated Water Infrastructure Criteria, which provide a framework for investment across the water value chain, including water supply, wastewater treatment, flood protection, drought resilience and nature-based solutions.
Rachel Halfaker of the Milken Institute described the 10,000 Communities Initiative, which brings investors together around resilience projects. Deal rooms help organizations assess their investment readiness, build project pipelines and answer targeted questions about system size, technology and secured capital. The process gives lenders greater clarity and helps them identify patterns across projects.
The consensus was that resilience planning must become routine. That will require “radical collaboration” and constant coordination, Halfaker said.
State Game Changers
The third panel examined how states can create opportunities and remove barriers. Brian Murray, director of the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, framed the discussion around three aspects of resilience: systems, incentives and implementation.
Matt Posner of the Resiliency Company said municipal bonds are an important tool for helping local governments prepare for a changing coastline and environment. Communities must understand the cost of doing nothing and embed resilience into decision-making, he said. Three states are anticipating disaster costs, and Posner also shared lessons from six states on fortified-roof adoption.
Olivia Rokotuiveikau of Bloomberg Associates said disasters often reveal how limited local capacity can be. Some towns have only three people working in government, making recovery difficult without state support. “States matter during a disaster because that’s where the funds flow through,” she said.
Amal Mahrouki of the American Institute for Architects said, “There are opportunities to ask why can’t we change things, like building codes. The state wants to help individuals living there.”
Melissa Roberts of the American Flood Coalition said, “Sadly, a big disaster has to happen to get attention.” According to the organization, every $1 invested in resilience ahead of a disaster saves $13 in recovery and economic costs, and countless heartaches and losses.In Florida, the coalition is bringing together mayors. Policy recommendations to the Florida legislature led to the landmark Always Ready law which has invested billions in resilience, and created the Florida Flood Hub for statewide data and modeling.
Resources
- Resilience Finance Guidebook for Local Governments
- Built to Endure: A Smart Guide for US Cities to Build Resilient Infrastructure That Lasts
- How States are Financing Property-Level Resilience: Lessons from Six States Scaling FORTIFIED Roof Adoption
Duke Throughout Climate Week NYC
Offshore wind and biodiversity
As part of climate and oceans research, Doug Nowacek of Duke hosted Offshore Wind: Benefits for People and Nature, a two-part event organized by Duke’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, in partnership with Empire Wind and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The event included discussion of the workforce, infrastructure and marine biodiversity that are essential to the successful development of offshore wind projects and explored the potential benefits of offshore wind projects from different perspectives, including energy companies, conservation and economic development organizations, scientists and policy specialists. The morning event, hosted at Windscape Brooklyn, explored benefits for people and nature through a panel discussion with representatives from the energy company involved in the Empire Wind project, the New York City Economic Development Corporation and a local labor union. Discussion centered on the social benefits associated with Empire Wind’s project, including provision of local jobs required to build and maintain the wind infrastructure and the power hub at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, and provision of clean energy capable of powering over 500,000 New York homes. In the words of one speaker, “Oceans are extremely generous when given the opportunity.” The afternoon session focused on biodiversity considerations and benefits of offshore infrastructure at New York Aquarium. Speakers shared academic research evaluating the impact of offshore wind development on wildlife and research about the capacity of offshore wind infrastructure to provide important habitat for marine organisms. Speakers included representatives from the Wildlife and Offshore Wind Project at Duke University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the World Ocean Council and the Tufts University School of Engineering.
Doug Nowacek, Director of Research Innovation and Advancement for Duke’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, delivers remarks at Windscape Brooklyn at an event focused on the social and ecological dimensions of offshore wind development.
Clean Air Action
Duke Professor Drew Shindell presented the findings of the recent UN Environment Programme’s “Hidden assets: The economic and health case for climate and clean air action,” to philanthropy and civil society guests during Global Methane Day at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Shindell co-chaired the report and said: “The report showed that the economic benefits of action are much greater than the costs even in the near term. Instead of asking whether we can afford to tackle climate change and air quality given so many other pressing concerns, policymakers everywhere should be asking themselves a bigger question: how can we afford not to?”
From Lab to Market
Victoria Salinas provided the keynote at “From Lab to Market: Accelerating Adaptation and Resilience Technologies from Universities,” hosted by Activate, Foley Hoag, Hazelwood Network, The New York Climate Exchange and Tailwind Futures. She encouraged attendees to help innovations secure funding and reach the scale needed by communities facing climate disasters.
“We want to enable recovery from climate-related disasters,” Salinas said. “For many people, the worst day feels like this could never happen. For those working in resilience, you see where this is going.”
She highlighted examples including New York City’s clean heat challenge and Tailwind Futures’ taxonomy of eight themes in climate adaptation and resilience.
Salinas also moderated a discussion with ecosystem builders from The New York Climate Exchange, Foley Hoag, Recursion Works, the Hazelwood Network and Activate. The panel explored how to strengthen the pathway from university research to market-ready resilience technologies. Salinas noted that innovations are maturing, but financing is still needed to bring them to scale.
Newsweek: Pillars of Stability
At a Newsweek event on resilience, Salinas joined a Cities 2040 panel with speakers from the public sector: NYC, Vermont and Massachusetts. “We pay a premium every time we recover from a disaster,” she said. “We need to have risk-informed conversations. Centering people and community is important.”
Built to Endure
At the Infrastructure Resilience Forum hosted by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Elizabeth Losos, executive in residence at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, participated in a panel on community-based climate resilience and adaptation. She emphasized the need for universities, governments and communities to work together from the beginning. “We are building a community of practice to address problems jointly,” Losos said. “If we do not bring everyone in at the beginning, top-down solutions may help, but will ultimately fall short.” She highlighted the recently released Built to Endure report.
Sara Oliver, director of the MEng program in Climate and Sustainability at Duke, moderated a panel at the Built to Endure event. She said an overarching theme of Climate Week for her is integration. “Resilience cannot live in a silo. It has to connect infrastructure, housing, public health, economic development, equity, and more (systems of systems; teams of teams). We need to move from vision to implementation, challenge outdated playbooks, measure progress, and continue making the case for sustained investment.”
Innovation Accelerators
Judy Ledlee of Duke’s Design Climate program joined a conversation about how regional innovation ecosystems help entrepreneurs commercialize technologies, secure customers and capital, and scale clean-tech companies. She shared the example of Infratech DC, which is developing energy-efficient cooling technologies for data centers. Design Climate students helped the startup refine customer discovery, prototype a cooling-plate solution and connect with Duke’s innovation ecosystem. The company has raised $50,000, won a Small Business Technology Transfer grant, joined the NVIDIA Inception Accelerator Program and is pursuing its first commercial deployments.
