The Resilience Adaptation Feasibility Tool (RAFT) as an approach for incorporating equity into coastal resilience planning and project implementation

Abstract

As coastal communities across the U.S. and worldwide undertake efforts to enhance their resilience to coastal hazards, they must do so while ensuring that all voices are heard, addressing and preventing disparate impacts, and, ultimately, increasing resilience in an equitable way. The Resilience Adaptation Feasibility Tool (RAFT) assists coastal communities in incorporating equity into resilience planning and implementation of projects to increase resilience. The RAFT includes social and economic dimensions in assessment of resilience and focuses on how localities can build resilience equitably. The RAFT process has three phases — a scorecard assessment, development of a resilience action checklist that identifies priority actions to build resilience, and implementation of resilience projects over a one-year period — and equity is integrated throughout. This paper provides an overview of the RAFT and how its approach incorporates equity in resilience planning and project implementation. The paper concludes with lessons learned from the RAFT experience that can be helpful for practitioners and communities interested in planning for and taking action to enhance coastal resilience in an equitable way.