Building Climate Resilience in Vulnerable Communities: Analyzing Designation and Use of Community Disaster Resilience Zones

The Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act of 2022 directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to designate communities that are vulnerable to natural disasters as Community Disaster Resilience Zones (CDRZs), which would then be prioritized for federal climate resilience funding. FEMA announced the first round of CDRZs in September 2023 – 483 census tracts that are high risk based on FEMA’s National Risk Index mapping tool and disadvantaged based on the White House Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. FEMA also followed the CDRZ Act’s mandate that the top one percent of census tracts based on risk in each state be designated as CDRZs, ensuring geographical representation of CDRZ communities.In this study, we summarize the risk and demographic characteristics of the tracts designated as CDRZs and explore two alternative approaches to designation: one that removes the requirement that tracts be disadvantaged based on the CEJST, using only the National Risk Index score, and one that removes the requirement that the top one percent in each state be designated as CDRZs. We also evaluate a potential “round 2” of CDRZs, expanding the list of designated tracts.We find that incorporating disadvantaged status, based on the CEJST, pulls more socially vulnerable, lower income, communities onto the list of CDRZs than would have been the case using the National Risk Index alone. At the same time, the average risk and resilience characteristics of the communities would be approximately the same. If the top one percent in each state requirement was dropped and designations based only on risk rankings and disadvantaged status, we find that only 22 states would have had CDRZs. This is because of the geographic concentration of risks in the United States, especially around the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast. Finally, our “round 2” list includes more relatively disadvantaged communities, with higher poverty rates, lower household incomes, and higher social vulnerability and slightly lower risk scores. This finding suggests that the requirement that communities be disadvantaged may begin to carry more weight in the designation process as new tracts are added to the CDRZ list.Using North Carolina as a case study, we compare CDRZs to communities that would have been selected by local experts and using local risk mapping tools. We find very little overlap in the census tracts chosen as CDRZs and these locally selected alternatives. We conclude from this exercise that some refinement of the approach, bringing in local knowledge along with the two national mapping tools, could be useful in the future. Interviews we conducted with state agencies and nonprofit organizations working on local resilience issues suggest some concerns about the CDRZ process. Most of these revolve around capacity and resource challenges in communities in gathering knowledge about CDRZs and accessing federal funding for resilience.