Municipal Resilience & Resilience Team information
Municipal Resilience
Significant climate resilience work takes place at the municipal level, with an eye to addressing each community’s unique population, infrastructure, and ecological needs. Following the release of the first Resilient Rhody plan in 2018, the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank launched the Municipal Resilience Program (MRP) in 2019. MRP led each municipality in the state through a workshop process to understand the connections between community issues, climate change and natural hazards, and municipal-level planning and actions. Completion of the workshop resulted in a summary-of-findings report for each community, along with a list of priority projects to guide their resilience planning. It also introduced the opportunity for communities to apply for MRP Action Grants, which help fund the design, engineering, and construction of resilience projects identified in the MRP process. As of 2025, all of Rhode Island’s municipalities have completed their participation in the program.
In response to high demand for capacity building and technical assistance at the municipal level, RIDEM hired three Regional Resilience Coordinators in 2025. Each works with different regions of the state to help fill gaps in municipal capacity by providing technical assistance for resilience projects.
Rhode Island’s 14 Health Equity Zones (HEZ) work in particular high-need communities across the state, with a focus on public health. In 2026, RIDOH launched a Community Climate Action Pilot, selecting three HEZ’s for a year-long project to advance local climate resilience priorities with the direct engagement of HEZ community members.
Regional Resilience Coordinators
The Regional Resilience Coordinators offer municipalities science-informed technical and policy assistance for projects that improve climate, community, and ecological resilience across Rhode Island. Incorporating a municipality’s MRP Summary of Findings, Hazard Management Plan, and Comprehensive Plan, the coordinators hold an annual goal-setting meeting resulting in a Technical Assistance Package that serves as a guide to the services the coordinators will provide and the projects to which they will contribute. The coordinators also work with each municipality to update their list of priority projects, both tracking progress toward completion and identifying new target projects as needed. Assistance areas include grant writing and proposal development, background research and case studies, communication on funding and assistance opportunities, community engagement and outreach, municipal resilience planning and project identification, project management, and data analysis and mapping.
