Project Description

The goal of this project is to to identify zones of shared risk in New Haven and Fairfield counties.

• Zones of shared risk are regions that face common challenges either in existence already or caused by climate change, and therefore risks are shared among or between groups of people that may have different perspectives and priorities for coastal resilience. A Zone of Shared Risk includes the houses, land, infrastructure, hydrological, ecological, social, and institutional elements that contribute to the functioning of a place. This project approach connects zones of shared risk with resilience corridors to link critical facilities and provide greater continuity of service to the lower-lying communities.
• A resilience corridor uses the concept of urban redevelopment corridors as a strategy to adapt coastal urban areas at risk. The resilience corridor supports transportation, utilities, stormwater, habitats, and economic development by connecting upland areas where supporting infrastructure exists down to shorefront communities.

The project identifies zones of shared risk using transportation, health, energy, water, housing, flood risk, and subpopulations that share overlapping issues to identify these vulnerable zones. This project analyses the elevation and topography, projected flood extent, ecological systems, structures, roadways, land uses, and social characteristics for coastal towns of New Haven and Fairfield County. These maps are overlapped to observe the zones of shared risk pockets also considering the historical changes that the town has undergone. The scale of analysis for this project is the individual town boundary.

Project Timeline: May 2019 - February 2021

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Project Outcomes

Project leads and the CIRCA team will develop planning analysis on new basemaps that focus on zones of shared risk in New Haven and Fairfield Counties. These maps are to be used for planning meetings with state, COG, municipal staff, consultants and during general engagement events.  Products will also be used in the regional climate vulnerability assessment.

Coastal Towns Zones of Shared Risk Dataset and Map Products