ORNL 'resilience' plan to help Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina communities bea...(made great strides in resilience plannin...)

CARRI also may provide clues to potential community response to climate change. Tom Wilbanks, ORNL Corporate Fellow and research director for CARRI, said global warming could potentially affect world weather and precipitation patterns. Government leaders are beginning to look at climate change as a national security issue and examining its impacts on ecosystems and economies.

While the immediate purpose of the study is to examine communities resilience to storms, this work has definite implications for climate change and will give us a better understanding of how cities will respond to the expected shifts in temperature, weather patterns and environmental conditions we expect as a result, Wilbanks said.

Edwards said CARRI could help communities move beyond their reliance on government and first responders and draw on business, education, and civic resources to prepare, plan and respond as efficiently and quickly as possible in the event of a disaster. CARRI will have access to national and international researchers and practitioners who can augment the findings from the community activities with the best information and practices available.

All of our partner communities are already doing some great work, so we look forward to working closely with key leaders in those communities to learn from what they are doing well, to help them locate and address any gaps, and to then formalize and develop some new best practices that can be shared and used by other communities.

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