August 23, 2020
CIRCA is hosting a mini-webinar series on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons throughout the month of September. Hear about a variety of topics on climate change and public health concerns in the Northeast. Register and read more at the webinar series website.
August 20, 2020
Understanding and assessing the risk posed by extreme storm events and floods is crucial for the successful resilience planning of coastal communities. There is limited tide gauge, buoy, and storm sensor data in Long Island Sound to project the extreme sea level statistics to determine the level of risk along the Connecticut coastline accurately.
To better assess risk, CIRCA reproduced the highest 44 storms between 1950 and 2018 using a coupled circulation and wave model. The modeled events are fit to a probability distribution to statistically estimate the annual exceedance probabilities and return periods for expected storms. The results presented here are to highlight the storm surge water levels and significant wave heights, which may contribute to a better understanding of extreme storms and guide decision-makers.
July 20, 2020
May 11, 2020
Through the Resilient Connecticut project, CIRCA has been working on a number of new tools and datasets to bring you the latest information on climate impacts. This type of information is critical as municipal, regional, and state planners identify priority conservation and development areas, site new infrastructure, and make long-term investments.
Join us on this webinar to hear, learn, and explore:
Webinar Slides
Check out the Webinar Presentation here.
Webinar Video
This webinar is part of a regular series hosted by CIRCA and involving different partners & organizations. These webinars will be available to watch live with opportunity for Q&A and a recording will be posted shortly following the event.
To receive notification about upcoming webinars, please sign up for the Resilience Roundup e-newsletter and CIRCA Announcements.
CIRCA’s second annual Resilient Connecticut Summit will take place on November 20th. The Summit is a wonderful way to network with people working on climate resilience in a variety of sectors and to hear the latest advancements in the Resilient Connecticut project.
At the first Summit, participants:
Further details for this year’s event will be available soon.
Stay tuned for more information. As plans are developed, we’ll share information via the Resilience Roundup and our November 2020 Summit webpage. Please share with anyone you think would be interested. The materials for the 2019 Summit are available here.
March 30, 2020
Coastal storm events and severe weather damage homes, businesses, infrastructure, and natural resources in New England communities. Creative strategies for shoreline stabilization and coastal stormwater management must build resilience, protect habitats, and reduce erosion and flooding. One solution is “living shorelines” – nature-based coastal infrastructure that addresses public health and safety concerns and preserves and restores coastal habitats. A recent project in Stratford, Connecticut provided 900 feet of coastal erosion control, added 30 acres of coastal habitat, and documented the ecological benefits of living shorelines through monitoring.
Our second living shorelines webinar of 2020 features speakers from Sacred Heart University and the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) on the environmental benefits of implementing living shoreline projects. The presentation will feature Connecticut case studies and recommendations for regulators, planners, practitioners, coastal property owners, and members of the public on successfully implementing nature-based coastal infrastructure projects.
Presenters:
• Kim Bradley, CIRCA, University of Connecticut
• Dr. Jennifer Mattei, Sacred Heart University
To receive notification about upcoming webinars, please sign up for the Resilience Roundup e-newsletter and CIRCA Announcements.
March 23, 2020
During this webinar, participants learned about:
Understanding climate vulnerabilities can be a complex undertaking. GIS mapping can help visualize the relationship between particular climate vulnerabilities like sea level rise, climate amplifiers such as socio-economic and existing infrastructure, and existing adaptive capacity indicators like flood controls. These maps will assist municipalities, Councils of Governments, and the state incorporate climate vulnerabilities into their regular planning activities and conduct resiliency-specific planning. Yaprak Onat described the Resilient Connecticut climate vulnerability maps prepared to date and the mapping indices used to create them. Alex Felson introduced the “zones of shared risk” concept, followed by Peter Minutti, who explored the methodology used to map the zones of shared risk.
This webinar is part of a regular series hosted by CIRCA and involving different partners & organizations. These webinars will be available to watch live with opportunity for Q&A and a recording will be posted shortly following the event.
To receive notification about upcoming webinars, please sign up for the Resilience Roundup e-newsletter and CIRCA Announcements.
December 13, 2019
Every year UConn Avery Point hosts a competition to make a gingerbread house. This year CIRCA built a resilience corridor and transit-oriented development (TOD) zone from candies and gingerbread cookies.
We were inspired by the resilience corridor cross-section proposed for the Resilient Connecticut project for New Haven and Fairfield Counties. The aim is to connect the shoreline communities that are sharing a similar level of flood risk to communities with less flood-risk with “resilient corridors”. Our gingerbread design included the shoreline communities, a resilience corridor, resilience hub, and transportation egress zone.
The gingerbread shore-front communities are designed to adapt to sea-level rise and frequent flooding effects.
The adaptation approaches include:
Home Elevation
The small gingerbread house community has higher risk levels of flooding. CIRCA sea level rise projections recommend that communities plan for 20 inches of sea-level rise by the year 2050. The base level of the houses elevated according to ASCE 24-14 guidelines.
Elevated Permeable Walkways
The access to the shoreline community is made by permeable walkway design of oyster crackers that are sloped from the shoreline and elevated to the house base floor level. The permeable walkways and roads are installed on a gravel base with elevated under-drain to filter the flood to the underlying soils. This concept was also used for resilience corridor design with pastry crisp bars.
Bioretention Area
The runoff from the residential areas and driveways are stabilized through sloped permeable walkways that direct the flow to the vegetative surface to stabilize the runoff. This landscaped lawn area made from green plant candies are placed at the edge of the road and shoreline.
Riprap Shoreline
The scouring on the porous and sand are tried to reduce by the crumbled graham cracker made rip-raps to lessen the erosion by the bay.
Rivers in Connecticut connect the coastal and inland communities. The rivers have a diverse set of marshes, habitats, and soils.
Un-mowed Vegetative Buffers
The natural vegetative cover around the river forms thicker and denser buffer zone to filter sediment and nutrients to move towards resilience corridor. We built sand and ripraps behind this buffer zone and mulch around the road. Most of our mulch is covered by the snow piled by the side of the way by our public workers.
Elevated road and train tracks
The resilience corridor allows egress to the higher transit-oriented zone. It perpendicularly crosscuts with the MTA rail line and I-95. The passage from the resilience corridor is regulated with traffic signs. The elevated train track and highway is raised along its entire length by wafers, which allows bridge access to the river on the right.
Coastal forest
Forests can reduce the impact of coastal hazards by dampening waves, stabilizing sediment, and absorbing water. The train tracks are also protected by coastal forest on the left, which created a natural habitat for our penguins and llamas.
Resilience corridors is a planning strategy that utilizes existing roads to the vulnerable coastal communities to higher ground upland territories. Our wafer elevated pastry crip bars, in this case, connect our mini gingerbread shoreline community to the transit-oriented development zone uphill. This is a retreat planning effort to give egress route to the homeowners to live both near and far from the developments.
A transit-oriented development (TOD) is a type of urban development that maximizes the amount of residential, business and leisure space within walking distance of public transport. We were only able to build a bus stop and train station from the gingerbreads due to the space limits. However, the TOD zone is a pedestrian-oriented and mixed-use community. Our gingerbread houses are powered by solar panels from sour candy strips and fruit loops.
We have a chance to increase our resilience to climate change and adopt sustainable solutions with our everyday actions (and a piece of candy!)
December 4, 2019
During this webinar, participants learned about:
Learn about the CIRCA-funded project, “Municipal Assistance for FEMA’s Community Rating System,” completed by Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and Milone & MacBroom Inc.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administers the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to provide flood insurance within communities that adopt and enforce floodplain regulations. Communities may choose to enter into the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System (CRS) in order to reduce the cost of flood insurance premiums for their property owners. Communities participating in the CRS Program go above and beyond the minimum standards and, depending on their level of mitigation efforts, can garner insurance premium reductions from 5-45%.
In response to the rising interest in the CRS program, CIRCA allocated funding to support communities with CRS entry and class advancement. CIRCA partnered with CT DEEP staff to advise Milone & MacBroom about which municipalities could benefit and take advantage of CRS technical assistance. As a result of this funding opportunity, participating communities were able to work toward increased CRS points and advance their CRS rating or enter the program, which will ultimately reap the benefit of lower flood insurance premiums on a community wide basis. Examples of such communities will be given throughout the webinar, along with transferable information for a municipality seeking CRS points.
Webinar Recording
This webinar is part of a regular series hosted by CIRCA and involving different partners & organizations. These webinars will be available to watch live with opportunity for Q&A and a recording will be posted shortly following the event.
To receive notification about upcoming webinars, please sign up for the Resilience Roundup e-newsletter and CIRCA Announcements.