The Southern California Association of Governments’ (SCAG) Regional Climate Adaptation Framework is the recipient of a 2021 APA Sustainability Award in the best “Policy, Law or Tool” category. Cambridge Systematics is proud to have partnered with SCAG and our team members at ESA, HereLA and Urban Economics to develop the Framework built to help local and regional jurisdictions in managing the negative impacts of climate change through analysis tools, policy and project planning, outreach templates, and funding guidance.
The CS project team, including David Von Stroh, Jon Overman, Lila Singer-Berk, Jayne Chang, Ramesh Thammiraju, Ishraq Rayeed Ahmed, Salah Uddin Momtaz, Jason Lemp and Sean McAtee supported the project by developing key principles and metrics, using LOCUS to better understand wildfire evacuation patterns and coordinating outreach. The team created and analyzed climate risk displacement scenarios, identified stranded zones and critical transportation links, and modeled travel behavior in these future scenarios. Crucially, the project identified the need for greater coordination between climate adaptation planning and affordable housing policy and planning.
As mentioned on SCAG’s website, “the Framework provides an overview of how the Southern California region can work together to plan and prepare for the impacts of sea level rise, extreme heat, increasingly frequent and damaging wildfires, and other climate-related issues. With the impacts of severe climate hazards and issues already being felt, adaptation planning is necessary to help individuals, communities, and natural systems cope with the unavoidable consequences of a changing climate.”
Thank you SCAG for partnering with us on this critically important—and award winning—work.