Selected Publications & Webinars

We are applying the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS) method in partnership with several California jurisdictions that are subject to wildfire hazards. Originally developed with a focus on flooding, the PIRS™ method enables the spatial evaluation of a community’s network of plans to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to hazards. The process aims to harmonize a community’s network of plans by systematically assessing policies and facilitating their adjustment to improve the focus and coordination of plans on building resilience in the most vulnerable locations.

To address the many-plan-little-integration dilemma, this project focuses on applying the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS) method to California jurisdictions that are subject to the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) fire hazard.

This case study reviews the City of Norfolk’s experience in application of the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard. Norfolk was the first demonstration community to apply the Scorecard.

We chronicle and evaluate the impacts of the Resilience Scorecard™ application process from the local prospective in three communities vulnerable to flooding and climate change.

We find that local plans are not fully consistent and do not always address the areas in a community most vulnerable to floods or sea level risks; moreover, some plans actually increase physical and social vulnerability to hazards.

This study is the first to use Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to investigate the influence of local planning capacity and other contextual factors on the integration of hazard mitigation policies and building of resilience across community ’networks of plans’ in six US coastal cities.

A Geodesign process was developed using the resilience scorecard to assess flood vulnerability using projections for the 100-year floodplain with sea-level rise by 2100.

This study examined the relationship between the spatial heterogeneity of landscape patterns and urban residents’ outdoor thermal comfort in Tokyo, Japan.

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In this study we analyze plan integration for flood resilience in the city of Nijmegen,

Comprehensive plans can play a pivotal role in reducing hazard vulnerability. However, there have been limited tools to assess if a comprehensive plan is of high quality or is congruent with other plans in reducing hazard vulnerability. It is against this backdrop that this study introduces Plan I.Q. – a new approach to assess and improve the degree of plan quality and plan integration for comprehensive plans.

This study uses correlational statistics to examine the association between wetland loss and the extent of plan integration for communities’ flood resilience while considering a series of other factors. It uses Fort Lauderdale in Florida and League City in Texas as its study sites – two cities with contrasting development contexts.

The PIRS™ for Heat was developed as an extension of the original Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™. This guidebook explains the rationale for the PIRS™ for Heat, provides a step-by-step guide for any practitioner or researcher interested in applying the methodology, includes a detailed and ready-to-go worksheet, and summarizes key plan integration findings from five communities across the U.S.

We apply a plan integration for resilience scorecard in six US coastal cities to evaluate the integration of local networks of plans and the degree to which they target areas most vulnerable to flooding hazards.

Spatially Evaluating Networks of Plans to Reduce Hazard Vulnerability (Version 2.0)

This study adds to the original PIRS™ approach by (1) comprehensively including plans from all administrative tiers, (2) adapting it beyond the Euro-American context, and (3) widening its thematic focus from flooding to extreme heat.

This study used the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard (PIRS) method to spatially evaluate a network of plans guiding land use and development in western Houston when Harvey struck.

We evaluate the degree to which equity policies in local networks of plans support risk reduction for socially vulnerable populations, and examine the relationship between equity policies scores and the level of social vulnerability in six cities exposed to floods and projected sea level rise.

To better understand coordination and conflicts in policy responses to flood hazards, this study evaluates a district in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, using the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard method.

Preliminary results indicate that the PIRS™ method is generalizable and can be applied to the wildfire hazard with small methodological and contextual modifications. Wildland fire in the WUI presents a unique analytical challenge due to the dynamics of fuel (natural and built environment) variables interacting with climate, topography, and human variables (e.g., land use, development patterns).

This progress essay is based on a poster presented at the meeting of Cal Poly's Wildland Urban Interface Fire Institute's Advisory Board in April 2023.

Seven of the ten most destructive fires in California have occurred in the last five years2, and one in four Californians lives in an area considered high-risk for wildfires3. These problems can be addressed by focusing on local planning and land use decisions that are guided by a community’s “network of plans.”

Jaimie Hicks Masterson, Program Coordinator, Texas Target Communities, presents "The Plethora of Plan Problem and Increasing Hazard Vulnerability." The presentation was given at “Natural, Built, Virtual,” the 19th annual Texas A&M College of Architecture Research Symposium, which was held Oct. 23 in the Langford Architecture Center’s Preston Geren Auditorium.

We explore application of a Plan Integration of Resilience Scorecard (PIRS) in the U.S. cities of Nashua and Norfolk that involved a partnership between university experts and local government staff to assess the degree to which networks of local plans are coordinated and target hazardous areas.