By Quincy Midthun, Mayors Innovation Project
Climate change continues to pose unprecedented challenges for cities, and the 2024 hurricane season reminded us that flood resilient infrastructure is critical—and increasingly complicated to fund, implement, and manage. On top of more frequent and more severe weather, the Trump administration has voiced plans to cut federal funding for disaster recovery, making flood resilience ever more important for US cities. The Mayors Innovation Project 2025 Winter Meeting held a panel on the data, financing, and leadership tools that mayors need to plan for and implement projects to help their cities withstand and recover quickly from floods. Below is a brief summary of the tools and best practices offered by the panelists.
The Challenge: Current data isn’t accurate
A key challenge cities face today is the availability of updated, accurate data to inform the planning and construction of climate resilient infrastructure. Federal maps are out of data and incomplete; according to NRDC, “FEMA only maps the 100-year floodplain with a 50th percentile confidence.” Better maps do exist–for a fee–leaving cities without the funds to pay for them or the capacity to use them at a disadvantage. Further, as with most policy matters, cities have historically prioritized “squeaky wheels”, the neighborhoods that have the time, money, and wealth to advocate for themselves. In 2021, the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that historically redlined communities face a greater risk of flooding compared to non-redlined communities. To keep communities safe and to protect valuable assets, cities must invest in the areas that are most vulnerable to flooding and who do not have the resources to recover quickly.
The Solution: Stack available data to prioritize vulnerable areas
Cities can use the free, publicly accessible data they already have to make the best decisions during the planning and design process. Senior Planner for Washington DC, Andrea Limauro, shared how his team developed a resilience focus area strategy that assigns priority to areas by scoring neighborhoods based on three weighted categories: vulnerable people, vulnerable assets, and actionability. “You want to protect people [first]… you’ve got to understand where people and [flood] risk overlap,” explained Limauro. Several of the sources DC used to create this framework are publicly available such as the CDC’s social vulnerability index, the US Census population data, and FEMA’s 500-Year Flood Hazard Maps. Sources that are specific to DC, but that other municipalities likely track as well, include community risk assessments, land ownership data, space availability data, and the location of critical assets (hospitals, schools, childcare centers, etc.) in a community. Other sources that cities mentioned to us in the planning process for this panel were the federal Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool and 311 data. Stacking these sources of data gives cities a clear picture of the areas of their city that are most vulnerable.
The Challenge: Funding and Financing Infrastructure
Infrastructure is wildly expensive, and there was widespread agreement in the room that the current system is set up to privilege wealthier, larger, high-capacity cities. Cities who lack the time, capacity, and expertise to fill out the lengthy, complicated federal funding applications are getting left behind. Executive Director of the American Flood Coalition (AFC), Melissa Roberts explained, “We are so focused on the idea of fraud that we create a huge amount of waste.” Lots of money and time are spent hiring consultants and gathering information to fill out applications rather than helping communities prepare or recover from floods. In the words of one mayor, “We’re spending more time on process than we are on results.”
The Solution: Use non-federal funds to unlock federal funds
Knowing where to start is key. Shalini Vajjhala, PhD., Executive Director of PRE Collective and moderator for this panel, recommended that cities ask themselves two questions before they start planning infrastructure projects:
- Who loses money if we don’t do something now?
- Who suffers the most?
Federal dollars often come at the very end of a project. It is cities, their leaders, and their partners who do the leg work in the beginning to set projects up for success. Oftentimes that means leveraging funds from a foundation at the start of a project. For Hoboken, it was money from the Rockefeller foundation that opened the door to financing from the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank and eventually to FEMA funds which helped them complete their ResilienCity Park, a park that provides community greenspace and is able to hold 2 million gallons of stormwater. Since Hoboken was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the City has invested in flood resilience strategies, including numerous resiliency parks, that minimize the impact of storms, and allows the City to get back to business quicker.
For cities that are ready to look for federal funding opportunities, Roberts shared AFC’s Flood Funding Finder Tool, which compiles all current opportunities. Some state governments even have staff whose job is to help local governments navigate the federal funding landscape. Roberts also recommended looking for grants from sources that often get overlooked like the EDA and the USDA which can help pay for additional staff capacity.
Flood Resilience: 5 Main Takeaways for Mayors:
Make climate change a main priority for your administration and emphasize its severity and timeliness. Mayor Bhalla explained, “The first thing I did as mayor was declare a climate emergency. Look at what’s happening in LA, our world is on fire. People have got to wake up… this is a matter of protecting human lives.”- Engage stakeholders early and often in the infrastructure planning process. Rather than coming to the community with an idea that they can either accept or reject, work with them to hear what they want and need. Roberts recommended finding “unlikely allies” such as senior groups, environmental organizations, or teen civic groups, who may not have formal experience with flooding, but care about the issue and are willing to become champions. “Having the community [involved] in the beginning, actually [helps] to get to better projects [and save] a lot of money on the backend,” explained Roberts.
- Ensure your infrastructure investments prioritize people over property. If possible, create a framework so that you can clearly show the areas of your city that are most vulnerable. “We need to really start thinking about our cities as: how can they live with flooding and how can we design them so that this flooding—that will happen—will do minimal damage to people first and buildings second,” said Limauro.
- Make the costs of not investing in resilience clear to your engineers, constituents, and council. Consider not just money spent repairing infrastructure, but all of the everyday economic activity that doesn’t happen when flooding occurs. To do that, mayors must “Ask the non-technical big questions,” said Vajjhala. For example, how much does the city spend on workers comp insurance, what sources of revenue/how much revenue does the city sacrifice when flooding occurs, etc.
- Play the long game. Flood resilient infrastructure projects are years in the making and can span numerous mayoral, gubernatorial, and/or presidential administrations. It’s important, especially in this moment, to adapt to temporary setbacks and not let them derail your city’s long-term progress.