Drexel Hosts Regional Workshop for Climate-Related Weather Preparedness

Attendees convened at Drexel’s Behrakis Grand Hall for The Environmental Collaboratory’s workshop last month. Photo by Lakin Casey.

This story was written through collaboration with The Environmental Collaboratory team members.

Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable communities. In the past five years alone, major disasters have claimed 2,000 lives and caused $121 billion in damages .

To address these challenges, The Environmental Collaboratory at Drexel University convened a regional workshop on Jan. 30 that brought together 68 stakeholders focused on community-level preparedness and recovery in response to climate-driven disasters.

The workshop’s key insights, discussions, and recommendations to improve emergency response and resilience-building efforts will be published in The Environmental Collaboratory’s forthcoming report, “Regional Community-Level Climate-Related Severe Weather Preparedness and Recovery.” Proposed key areas of focus include assessing local resource adequacy, institutional capacity and the compounding impacts of disparities, as well as addressing gaps in recovery funding. Through continued cross-sector collaboration, policy recommendations and resource guides, the report will provide a strategic roadmap for improved community level emergency preparedness and recovery, said Vice Provost and Executive Director of the Environmental Collaboratory

“After the success of the Drexel-hosted event, we have now created a shared understanding of the unmet needs of severe weather emergencies across sectors, built an interdisciplinary network that can better address the needs of communities experiencing emergencies, and developed an action plan,” said Stanislaus, who presented the event’s opening remarks.  

The workshop included representatives from affected communities; state and local preparedness leaders; public health experts; members of national science organizations; and experts from academia, including Drexel faculty and undergraduate and graduate students.

Through a pre-event survey, panel session, presentations and working groups, participants discussed the various factors affecting the region’s ability to respond to and recover from severe weather emergencies, including an adequacy of local resources, institutional capacity and preparedness; compounding impacts on vulnerable communities; and recovery funding gaps.

The convening also premiered a video developed by Maya Hillis, an environmental engineering PhD student in Drexel’s College of Engineering, to show to the severity and longevity of the impact of recent extreme weather events. 

Another key part of the event was a panel discussion on the need for improved emergency communication practices and the importance of public health and environmental data to strengthen public understanding and awareness. The panelists included Fernando Treviño and Brian Moore from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; Erik Leeds from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency; Elizabeth Cerceo from Cooper University Hospital; Rebecca Piser from Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health; and Brenda Whitfield from the Eastwick community.

Featured speaker Dallas Hetherington, a presenter from C-Change Conversations, opened the event with a presentation focused on climate change’s growing impact on human health and security. Chitra Kumar, managing director of the Climate & Energy Program in the Union of Concerned Scientists, was the other featured speaker, and led a presentation on climate resilience in Philadelphia. 

More information about the event can be found on the Environmental Collaboratory website and a recap published by Inside Climate News. In addition to the previously mentioned post-event work, future ongoing efforts include a consultation with America Is All In network and The Environmental Collaboratory’s presentation on the event’s findings at the NYC Climate Week in September.