Municipal Resilience Program

In the spring of 2021, the Town of North Kingstown embarked on certification within the state of Rhode Island's Municipal Resilience Program (MRP). As part of that certifi­cation, the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank (RIIB) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) provided the Town with a community-driven process to assess current hazard and cli­mate change impacts and to surface projects, plans, and policies for improved resili­ence. In August 2021, North Kingstown's Core Team helped organize a Community Re­silience Building Workshop facilitated by TNC in partnership with RIIB. The core di­rective of this effort was the engagement with and between community members to de­fine strengths and vulnerabilities and the development of priority resilience actions for the Town of North Kingstown.

The North Kingstown Community Resilience Building Workshop's central objectives were to:

• Define top local, natural, and climate-related hazards of concern;
• Identify existing and future strengths and vulnerabilities;
• Identify and prioritize actions for the Town;
• Identify opportunities to collaboratively advance actions to increase resilience
   alongside residents and organizations from across the Town, and beyond.

The Town of North Kingstown employed a unique "anywhere at any scale", com­munity-driven process called Community Resilience Building (CRB) (www.CommunityResilienceBuilding.org). The CRB's tools, reports, other relevant planning documents, and local maps were integrated into the workshop process to provide both decision-support and visualization around shared issues and existing priorities across North Kingstown. The North Kingstown Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (2019) and Comprehensive Plan (2019) were particularly instructive. Using the CRB process, rich with information, experience, and dialogue, the participants produced the findings presented in this summary report including an overview of the top hazards, current concerns and challenges, existing strengths, and proposed actions to improve North Kingstown's resilience to hazards and climate change to­day, and in the future.

The summary of findings transcribed in this report, like any that concern the evolving nature of risk assessment and associated action, are proffered for com­ments, corrections and updates from workshop attendees and other stakeholders alike. The leadership displayed by the Town of North Kingstown on community re­silience building will benefit from the continuous participation of all those con­cerned.