ABAG's Resilience Program announces two new grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in support of mitigation planning to reduce the impacts of current and future natural hazards, and recovery planning to rebuild quickly after a disaster. As a national leader among Councils of Governments, ABAG's Resilience Program has secured six grants totaling $1,103,308 in the last three years, and the new grants from Rockefeller Foundation for $300,000 and from FEMA for $1,370,000.
The focus of the Rockefeller grant is to assure information exchange among the three cities that are part of Rockefeller's international 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative, and linkage between the 100RC cities (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley) and the rest of the region. The FEMA grant provides resources to regionalize the effort. The 100RC initiative is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. ABAG Resilience Program will provide technical assistance in support of 100RC in the Bay Area from July 2015 and continuing through June 2017.
The scope of work funded by the two new grants includes analyzing and disseminating best practices; serving as a regional coordination hub; assisting with the development of resilience plans, initiatives, financing mechanisms, and innovative policies - all especially as related to residential soft story building safety, energy assurance planning, finance incentives for housing safety, and assessing regional lifeline system vulnerability. The two grants are complementary.
Creating a sustainable region requires mitigation planning to reduce the impacts of future earthquakes and other natural hazards, and recovery planning to rebuild quickly after the disaster. For more information about the 100 Resilient Cities program, visit the website at:www.100resilientcities.org and for more information about ABAG's Resilience Program visit the website at: resilience.abag.ca.gov.