The Sea-Level Rise in the Classroom curriculum enhances scientific, environmental, and civics literacy of high school students through four modules on understanding and addressing sea-level rise impacts. Students that understand the risks and are prepared to undertake potential solutions generate an empowered coastal citizenry able to support resilient communities, ecosystems, and economies. However, school structure during COVID-19 presents different learning settings and hands-on explorations are not always possible. This presentation will share the adaptations we have made to continue reaching high school students in their classrooms or homes. As part of our curriculum we developed a guide for classes to visit 12 high water marks along the Mississippi coast. High water marks are a visible representation of prior floods and are placed as an educational tool to inform residents about risks from floods and consider actions to be more resilient. In collaboration with other departments at Mississippi State University including the Geosystems Research Institute and Northern Gulf Institute we have developed a virtual reality version of this field trip. Using an app, students can visualize water levels from Hurricane Katrina along with models of what Katrina would look like with future sea-level rise. Distance learning also restricted access of guest speakers. To connect local resilience professionals with high school classes we recorded interviews saved as a digital resource. Adapting in-person lessons to virtual learning helps reach students where they are and increases usability of our curriculum.

The Marine Education Center (MEC), part of the University of Southern Mississippi, recently expanded a multi-year Meaningful Watershed Education Experience (MWEE) program to reach students from across the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast. The program focuses on coastal hazard resilience and aligns with the Community Resilience Index (CRI), a MS-AL SeaGrant publication, to introduce community planning and mitigation in the classroom. The program is multi-faceted and involves teacher development, student learning experiences, and a stewardship project. This past year over 600 students participated from 8 different schools. Partner teachers received support and attended a professional development workshop at the MEC exploring community resilience topics. Teachers then introduced students to resilience topics and how rising sea levels and coastal hazards may directly affect their communities. Students became with familiar with advanced mapping applications, i.e. the NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer which highlights these direct affects in the community. Students next went outside the classroom on a trip to the MEC where they took a boat ride and collected samples in Davis Bayou. Back in the classroom, teachers then introduced the problem-based-learning projects with challenge scenarios assigned to student teams. The students worked together to explore historical flooding in their neighborhoods and propose solutions to the coastal community challenges. The groups then presented their solutions and the top presentations were selected to attend and present their ideas at the MEC’s Stewardship Summit. This project has been successful with the MEC and participating teachers continue to return to have their students be part of this meaningful learning experience in community resilience.

Recognizing that coastal communities are at risk to natural, economic, and technological disasters, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance and Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium provided small grants for communities to build capacity for responding to future disasters in the Gulf of Mexico through the NOAA Regional Coastal Resilience Grant. While significant funding may be available to communities after a disaster, there are not many existing funding opportunities for communities that want to take proactive measures to become more resilient before the next storm. These small grants filled a real need for eight communities, as well as provided a series of “demonstration projects” at the local level we have learned from and shared with communities around the Gulf. The goal was to help Gulf of Mexico coastal communities enhance their overall resilience to future hazards using a systematic and integrated approach leading to standard methods to engage communities. During the four-year project, we found the following to be true: (1) New tools are not always necessary to build resilience- our gap analysis found most respondents just needed technical support or hands-on learning with existing tools in order to be successful; (2) Small grant programs can fill a real need- they provide “demonstration projects” at the community level that can be shared broadly. Impacts can include improving resilience, supporting business continuity, increasing capacity, enhancing habitat, and expanding best practices; and (3) Community of Practice groups work- these groups encourage networking of communities and practitioners to collectively learn from one another and build upon existing lessons learned so resources can be used in a more productive way. This presentation will discuss the actions involved in building resilience and what we’ve learned from communities in the Gulf about the process of taking an idea for change and turning it into a real on-the-ground project.

Natural infrastructure approaches are recognized by coastal communities as effective options to reduce coastal flooding, manage stormwater runoff, adapt to climate change, and protect the quality of coastal waters and ecosystems. During this presentation, participants will learn about the suite of natural infrastructure resources available from NOAA’s Digital Coast. These tools have been developed to help coastal decision-makers plan and implement natural and nature-based infrastructure approaches in their communities. Resources highlighted will include the Nature-Based Solutions Training, Green Infrastructure Effectiveness Database, and various communication aids. Together, these resources help communities get started with natural infrastructure planning, explore the effectiveness of natural infrastructure strategies, and communicate their benefits.

Communities that can increase their resilience are in a better position to absorb losses and other adverse impacts from climate-related natural hazards and disasters. For this assertion to be useful, however, insight regarding how to better measure and benchmark the concept will be valuable. This is because existing metrics aimed at measuring resilience suffer from a number of key limitations. Important characteristics of hazard and community context are often ignored. Moreover, most indicator-based methods represent a broad-brushed approach that often neglects the true underlying drivers (or lack thereof) of resilience at the community level. It is within this context that the purpose of this presentation is to describe the results of an MS-AL Sea Grant funded project aimed at developing an integrated measurement framework to better understand drivers of community resilience within the Mississippi and Alabama coastal zip codes. The methodology includes: 1) the identification of context-specific characteristics that drive the resilience of communities and businesses along the entirety of the Mississippi and Alabama coast; 2) the utilization of “top-down” (quantitative) and “bottom-up” (stakeholder-led) approaches; and 3) a better understanding of how hazard extent and scale affect resilience modeling results. With improved resilience metrics, our vision is to provide governments, risk managers, community and business leaders, and researchers new opportunities to create local initiatives and equitable public policy programs to increase the capacity of communities to mitigate, respond, and recover effectively and efficiently from damaging climate-related events.

Changes in construction methods are improving the durability of our homes in the face of severe weather. Nearly 20,000 homeowners in 17 states have used the nationally recognized FORTIFIED Home™ resilient construction standard to strengthen their homes and reduce the cost of ownership. FORTIFIED Home is used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and, increasingly, by state and local entities, to reduce the risk of loss from storms. Learn how beyond-code construction can reduce the likelihood of damage to new and existing homes from both high winds and water intrusion, two leading causes of loss and disruption.