This project provides small and mid-sized municipalities in Oakland County with a practical, accessible template to identify and communicate climate vulnerabilities. CLC Fellow, Jeewon Suh and her team, compiled current best practices to write a Vulnerability Assessment Primer. This easy to follow guide helps local governments understand how climate change might impact their community and offers a step-by-step framework to understand the 3 main components of climate vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. After exploring these components in their local context, making use of linked data sets and relevant resources, users can then organize and present their results in a preliminary assessment. The Preliminary Climate Vulnerability Assessment Template allows users to customize an outward facing report as they work through the Primer.

Jeewon designed these materials to be customizable for use across other communities in Southeast Michigan and beyond. It is written for planners, public officials, and nonprofit partners with varying levels of expertise in climate. It is also the start of a broader effort by Oakland County to support local governments in assessing their communities’ vulnerabilities and building regional resiliency.

• Location: Oakland County, MI
• Project Team: Jeewon Suh (Fellow, University of Michigan), Nicole Card (Mentor, Oakland County Sustainability Specialist), Kim Channell (Technical Advisor, GLISA)
• Project Presentation: Slides (PDF), Video (YouTube)
• Project Deliverables:
  • Climate Vulnerability Assessment Primer (PDF) - guide to help municipalities understand how climate change will impact their community including climate projections, vulnerability, and need for proactive adaptation.
  • Preliminary Climate Vulnerability Assessment Template (Word Document) - customizable vulnerability assessment template for municipalities to organize and present their initial results after following the above guide.