Regional Convening for Community-Level Preparedness for Increasingly Severe Weather
With rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and increasingly erratic precipitation patterns, communities face heightened risks from floods, storms, extreme heat, and cascading disruptions to essential services (power, transportation, healthcare access, communications). TEC convenes cross-sector stakeholders including residents from the most affected communities, community-based organizations (CBOs), state and local preparedness leaders, public health experts, researchers, and national science organizations to address gaps in community-level preparedness and resiliency for increasingly severe weather. Specifically, this effort is to build the tools and capacity for community institutions to be prepared and resilient to prevent or minimize the impacts of extreme weather, rather than focusing on emergency response alone. TEC’s hope is that the newsletter will serve as tool for sharing knowledge investment in community level preparedness from extreme weather.
First Annual Convening: January 2025
In 2025, TEC hosted the first Community-Level Preparedness for Increasingly Severe Weather convening and published an action plan synthesizing preliminary surveys, convening dialogue, workshops, and virtual consultations with stakeholders nationwide. Thirteen themes emerged from this process, underscoring a core finding: community-centered preparedness requires coordinated action across agencies and sectors at a scale that matches the urgency and magnitude of climate risk. The report also emphasized how preparedness systems frequently fail to reach those most vulnerable (including people with disabilities, older adults, and immigrant/refugee communities), particularly when systems rely on opt-in communication tools, inconsistent translation capacity, and uneven last-mile outreach.
Collaborative, collective efforts are vital to ensure that our communities are prepared for extreme weather conditions. It inspires hope to see the cross-sectoral community that the Environmental Collaboratory and partners are convening to inform this urgent work.”
Katie Unger Baillie, Director, University of Pennsylvania Environmental Innovations Initiative
Second Annual Convening: January 2026
The 2026 convening was organized to move from insight to implementation. The purpose of the second annual convening was to deepen collaboration by building on the 2025 report’s findings; identify practical, near-term actions that close known gaps in community-level preparedness; and clarify where TEC and partners can jointly develop tools, templates, and coordination structures between convenings. Attendance reflected this collaborative implementation focus, with representation spanning CBOs and trusted messengers, city and public health agencies, emergency management, healthcare systems, academics, and regional/national partners.
Through participatory knowledge-sharing, the 2026 convening centered on four “Themes for Action” that reflect both report-identified gaps and partner priorities: Early Warning Systems, Accessible Emergency Messaging, and Multilingual Support; Heatwave Preparedness and Right to Cooling; Public Health and Hospital Systems; and Strengthening Community Partnerships. A document was developed to summarize the four areas selected as priorities, describe a vision for each area, and provide viable recommendations for action.
