IEC Works With Local Leaders to Enhance Climate Resilience

Over the past two years, IEC has renewed our focus on combating the most harmful effects of climate change in Iowa communities. From stronger, more frequent storms and tornadoes to more unpredictable and devastating floods, droughts, and heat waves, Iowa is experiencing a rising number of billion-dollar disasters in recent years. To meet this challenge, IEC launched our Climate Initiatives Program in July of 2024. 

The program is intended to help prepare our communities and the Iowans who call them home for the ongoing and increasingly worsening impacts of climate-fueled extreme weather. In a recent project, we partnered with the CDC Foundation to provide direct assistance in building resilience in three Iowa communities; Davenport, Dubuque, and Muscatine. 

To begin the process, IEC leveraged federal data to create a web-based map focusing on climate and environmental health threats in Iowa. This map highlighted areas of elevated risk and disproportionate impact of climate change. With these findings, our team created guides to simulate two natural disasters – a tornado and a flood – and delivered them in Dubuque and Muscatine alongside community leaders.

In April, I travelled to Eastern Iowa to deliver these exercises in climate preparedness – first in Dubuque and most recently in Muscatine. The exercises brought together city and county leaders in public health, emergency management, and local philanthropy to discuss current climate hazards plans, and identify gaps to ensure that communities are prepared to work together in emergency situations. These exercises were designed to simulate real, disastrous climate threats and health-related impacts, particularly in disadvantaged neighborhoods within the target area.  

Iowans will benefit from this work because we all do better when our communities are better prepared for our rapidly changing future. These dynamic exercises hosted alongside local decisionmakers have brought forth thoughtful dialogues on climate resilience and preparedness at the neighborhood level with a keen focus on protecting the most vulnerable.

In Dubuque, the exercise simulated a tornado tearing through the center of the city, going from the southeast corner to the northeast. The scenario challenged local public health and emergency management leaders to ask questions about emergency response under unique conditions, including a damaged hospital and prolonged power outage. Participants were asked to consider how to coordinate essential services and connect with vulnerable populations, including elderly residents, families with children, and the unhoused.  

In Muscatine, the exercise challenged decisionmakers to think dynamically about cascading power grid failures under “dangerously hot conditions.” Impacts of extreme heat on the power grid and the associated challenges on vulnerable groups sparked discussions for clear and streamlined public messaging while illuminating the need for expanded approaches to building preparedness.  

In both communities, the exercises illuminated an appetite for community resilience hubs, known as a location with reliable electricity, clean drinking water, air conditioning, and a variety of other services, that are available and known to residents ahead of the next extreme weather event.  

With this insight, our team is working to build our capacity to guide communities through the process of developing community resilience hubs as a strategy to adapt to climate-fueled extreme weather. Working with the City of Des Moines, IEC will play a key role in executing the AdaptDSM climate action plan components calling for the establishment of community resilience hubs.

Community resilience hubs have the potential to augment community preparedness to climate-fueled extreme weather across Iowa. Helping the city establish their community resilience hub network in Des Moines can serve as a model for other communities to implement as they seek strategies to build resilience.”

Some communities in Iowa have already integrated resiliency hubs into their climate adaptation plans, with several hubs already active. For example, the Wellington Heights Community Church in Cedar Rapids unveiled their hub in 2023, focused on providing ample electricity during severe storms. The structure now boasts an eight-kilowatt solar roof and 10-kilowatt-hour battery energy storage system. 

IEC’s work in this area is already gathering statewide and national attention. Recently, our team was proud to share our work with decisionmakers at the annual Public Health Conference of Iowa and with a national audience in Baltimore, Maryland at the National Preparedness Summit, a national gathering of public health and emergency management practitioners.  

As our efforts in this work to build climate resilience grow, complementing our continued efforts to prioritize climate mitigation, we look forward to engaging more Iowans across our state in our work.  

Are you interested in learning more about community-centered conversations on climate change? Connect with our team at iecmail@iaenvironment.org or sign up for our newsletter.