Building adaptive capacity of US Gulf Coast city practitioners to extreme weather events

Building city practitioners’ capacity to prepare for and respond to climate change-driven events can increase coastal cities’ resilience. We conducted a first-of-its-kind mixed methods research project from 2021 to 2023 with 46 US Gulf Coast small and midsize cities to measure the effectiveness of an adaptive capacity-building intervention: a stormwater planning tool called FloodWise Communities (FWC) deployed through the engagement between researchers and practitioners in each city. City practitioners were surveyed pre- and post-intervention between September 2021 and December 2022. Interviews were then conducted through July 2023. We found (1) FWC positively relates to perceptions of actionable knowledge and a change in adaptation intentions; (2) city practitioners’ adaptation-relevant roles and responsibilities positively related to their perceptions of actionable knowledge and adaptation intentions, with implications for their agency to build adaptive capacity; and (3) anticipated and unanticipated uses of the FWC tool influenced city practitioners’ perceptions of their adaptive capacity.