The land-use pattern and development of many communities are under the simultaneous influences of a series of plans. Unfortunately, there is usually little collaboration between the agencies responsible for each plan. Meanwhile, these agencies often fail to fully spatially evaluate their plans before the latter come into effect. Subsequently, plans these days often contradict each other with regard to addressing a community’s vulnerability to hazards. It is to address this problem that this guidebook was written. It summarizes in blank language the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™, an approach the research team at Texas A&M University developed to evaluate how consistent and targeted a community’s collection of plans is when addressing vulnerability to a hazard.
After introducing the potential causes of inconsistency between plans as well as the basics of the Plan Integration Resilience Scorecard™, this guidebook walks its audience through the process of Plan Integration Resilience Scorecard™ analysis step by step: the assembly of plans, compilation of applicable policies, determination of planning districts and hazard zones, policies mapping, policies scoring, representation of the scores, and physical and social vulnerability analysis using the scoring results.
The guidebook then offers a number of suggestions about how planning practitioners can make use of the analysis results. It focuses on how to use the results to enhance plans’ consistency and the knowledge of different parties, as well as a community’s resilience to hazards. It concludes by referring to two case-study communities – League City, Texas and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The discussions of both communities bring to light a number of policies that can contribute to vulnerability reduction. Additionally, the case study of League City showcases how plans can concentrate on improving the less vulnerable areas while paying less attention to the areas needing policy attention more desperately. Meanwhile, the case study of Fort Lauderdale demonstrates a successful case in which plans pay a high degree of attention to the more vulnerable areas. The Fort Lauderdale case study also highlights the policies planners can adopt when their communities have limited developable land.
Supplemental Primers of Practice
