Freshwater Collaborative Water Policy Network Meeting: Case Study and Methods Presentation – How Community Plans in Wisconsin Address Resilience to Coastal Hazards

Watch the recorded webinar here: How Community Plans in Wisconsin Address Resilience to Coastal Hazards

David A. Hart, AICP, Associate Director for Extension at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute, and Leah Bulbula, a Graduate Student in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, presented their collaborative research on how Wisconsin’s coastal communities address resilience and hazard mitigation in local planning efforts.

Most local governments along the Lake Superior and Lake Michigan coasts in Wisconsin have plans in place to guide growth and change. While adoption of plans is a common and relatively straightforward process, assessing implementation and coordination among plans is more challenging. Wisconsin Sea Grant collaborated with the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at UW-Madison to study the extent to which coastal hazards are considered in local comprehensive and hazard mitigation plans. Reviews of comprehensive and hazard mitigation plans in coastal counties, cities and villages in Wisconsin were conducted in 2015 and 2021. The resulting reports show the extent to which coastal community plans in Wisconsin address coastal hazards and provide examples of best practices for building resilience to coastal natural hazards through community plans. A review of comprehensive plans in coastal townships is ongoing. These reviews provide a starting point for deeper analysis of community plans using the “Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard” developed by researchers at Texas A&M University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Completing the scorecard shows where the network of community plans are working well together to promote resilience to natural hazards, but also identifies plan, policy and spatial conflicts that worsen existing vulnerabilities or creates new ones. Lessons from three experiences with the scorecard for Great Lakes communities will be shared.