Vulnerability Assessment
Project Description
A Community Vulnerability Assessment is a structured process that helps identify potential climate-related impacts to a community, significant risks, and why those areas of risks are present. By identifying vulnerabilities across multiple dimensions, communities can prioritize action, strategically build resilience to protect essential aspects of the community, and plan more effectively for a changing climate. This process ideally explores the following dimensions of the community:
Physical Infrastructure:
This includes the built environment (e.g., roads, buildings, critical systems) that may be exposed to climate hazards like flooding, extreme heat, or storms. Understanding which assets are vulnerable helps communities plan for infrastructure upgrades, relocation, or emergency preparedness.
Social Vulnerabilities:
Climate change doesn’t affect everyone equally. A vulnerability assessment looks at population groups who may be more at risk due to age, income, health,, housing conditions, or access to resources. This includes seniors, people with disabilities, low-income households, among other groups. The goal is to ensure that adaptation strategies are equitable and responsive to community needs.
Intangible Community Values:
These include sense of place, cultural connections, historic sites, and community identity. Climate impacts that threaten these values can lead to emotional, spiritual, or cultural loss. A vulnerability assessment helps identify how these intangible values intersect with community priorities (e.g., how wildfires may disrupt people’s connection to place or cultural traditions).
A comprehensive vulnerability assessment that considers physical infrastructure, social vulnerabilities, and intangible community values reveals where risks overlap, highlights which threats matter most, and helps identify solutions that protect the full fabric of the community. A less comprehensive assessment that focuses only on roads, buildings, and other assets can still guide technical upgrades but may overlook the social and cultural factors that shape how climate impacts are experienced and how effectively adaptation efforts serve all members of the community.
Why This Project Matters
Provides a foundation for community adaptation strategies
This evidence-based foundation helps communities prioritize actions and design strategies that are grounded in both science and lived experience.
Proactively identifies potential climate risks before they become critical.
By identifying potential threats before they escalate into crises, a community can take proactive steps to reduce harm and build resilience over time, rather than reacting after the damage is done.
Empowers communities to understand and prepare for climate uncertainties
By making climate risks visible and understandable, the process helps communities to be more informed, engaged, and equipped to take action, even in the face of complex or uncertain futures.
Supports long-term, cross-sector planning
From housing and transportation to health and economic development, a vulnerability assessment can guide decisions that cut across sectors and timeframes, aligning resilience efforts with other community goals.
Bridges technical expertise with local community knowledge
A well-rounded assessment combines scientific data, climate projections, and local insights. This creates a strong foundation for adaptation strategies that are both evidence-based and community-informed.
Establishes a data-set in which funding requests can be based
The assessment will equip the community with data and narratives that can ground requests for funding to support the implementation of resilience-building measures.
Key considerations:
Community readiness
If the community is preparing to start a comprehensive or resilience planning process, a vulnerability assessment can help lay a strong foundation. It can surface key risks, highlight community priorities, and ensure that future plans are grounded in both data and lived experience while simultaneously cultivating engagement throughout the process.
If the vulnerability assessment is happening after a comprehensive or resilience plan, revisit those plans. Identify what has worked, what’s still relevant, and what should be carried forward or captured in the assessment. Use those documents to guide a conversation: Where are we now? How can a deeper understanding of how climate change may impact us help strengthen existing plans and guide future priorities? After the assessment is completed, take time to integrate findings into the comprehensive or resilience plan, making updates as relevant to ground plans and action in the newly acquired data.
Resources
*This vulnerability assesment plug and play was developed with the support of Stephanie Sun from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
Cost
Range from ~$10,000 (desktop analysis) to more comprehensive assessments at a higher price point
Desktop Analysis: ~$10,000
Uses existing data sources
Limited community engagement
High-level overview only
Comprehensive Assessment: ~$25,000-$50,000
In-depth data collection
Extensive community engagement
Custom data validation
Multiple communication formats
Time Requirement
Approximately 1 year from start to completion
The assessment process can be aligned with existing comprehensive planning timelines. If happening at the same time, the engagement process can serve for both assessment and planning, integrating the two into one narrative within the community.
The assessment process can follow a flexible timeline based on community capacity
People Power
5-10 volunteer task force members
Considerations for the task force:
Consider budgeting stipends for participants
Build in learning opportunities
Maintain open communication
Be flexible with participant availability
Community expertise is valuable during this process. Community voice and perspective help make the assessment accessible, relatable, and grounded in lived experience, resulting in an assessment that people can see themselves in. The expertise brought by technical partners matters, but it stands on equal footing with the knowledge held within the community.
Regional and town-specific assessments:
Vulnerabilities often extend beyond municipal boundaries. Flooding, for example, doesn’t stop at the town line. In regions where communities are closely connected or interdependent, regional vulnerability assessments can offer a more comprehensive understanding of risks and shared priorities. Communities should reflect on whether a regional approach makes sense for them. If it does, they can begin building relationships with surrounding towns, especially those they rely on or that rely on them. This helps determine whether a regional assessment is appropriate.
If your community chooses a town-specific assessment, it’s still worth reaching out to nearby towns, particularly those within your county, that are also conducting assessments. Staying in conversation throughout the process and sharing results can lead to stronger coordination and learning across communities.
How to:
Initial Preparation
Identify initial community concerns and document existing climate change observations. Some questions to consider are:
Where have you already been seeing the impact of climate change in your community?
How do you feel about these impacts? What do you think these changes mean for the community? What are your greatest concerns related to these impacts?
Who are the people most vulnerable to these changes?
What makes your community special? What makes you want to live in your community?
What are the things you want to maintain into the future? What are the things you are worried about?
What are your priorities in terms of equity and justice?
You don’t have to have all these answers. You will get closer to answers through the vulnerability assessment, but having these initial conversations before starting an assessment can help move the process forward and can also help inform the specific scope of the assessment.
Identify the climate hazards your community wants to focus on.
Start by naming the hazards that feel most urgent (flooding, extreme heat, wildfires, changing ecosystems, etc.). If you’re working with outside experts, having a clear focus will help you find the right support. For example, if your concern is sea level rise, look for someone with coastal expertise.
Hosting listening sessions, community conversations, or informal check-ins can be helpful ways to gather this input and begin building shared understanding.
Form Task Force
Recruit diverse representatives to serve as community advisors in the task force. Include youth, representation from different sectors, and community leaders, both formal and informal.
Establish clear roles and expectations
Budget potential stipends for participants
Secure funding
Research grant opportunities. Some funding sources include:
Community Resilience Partnership
State grants
Private foundations
Regional planning organizations
Potential nonprofit partnerships
Contact regional planning organizations
Explore Community Resilience Partnership options
Consider nonprofit partnerships
Select Technical Partner
Research potential partners who have expertise related to your priority hazards.
Evaluate:
Subject matter knowledge. For example, if groundwater is a concern, look for someone with hydrology experience.
Alignment with their processes. Does their approach reflect your community’s values? For example, some firms prioritize community engagement, while others may focus more on data and analysis with less community involvement.
Flexibility in the assessment process. Are they willing to adapt the assessment process to fit your community’s needs?
Assessment process
Engage the community through workshops
Validate information with local knowledge
Make space for inter-group conversations. If the vulnerability assessment is happening alongside a resilience or comprehensive plan, build in time for those working on each effort to connect. These conversations help ensure that insights from the assessment are carried into more action-oriented planning.
Communication and Dissemination
Create multiple communication formats
Develop fact sheets
Host community events
Create interactive web resources
Ensure accessibility and community relevance
Next Steps
Continue community engagement as you share-out results
Integrate findings into comprehensive planning
Develop action plans such as community resilience plans
Identify neighboring towns that have also completed assessment, if you have not already done so, and meet to share results and identify potential for collaborative next steps
Consider integrating results into your town’s Emergency Management Plan, if such a plan exists
Consider collaborating with other towns in your county to bring results to the county’s Emergency Management Plan
Seek ongoing funding for implementation