The Land of Sky Regional Council (LOS) is a regional planning and development organization that serves a five-county area in Western North Carolina. LOS offers technical assistance to local governments and oversees various initiatives. At the center of many of these efforts is Mary Roderick, serving as the Planning Director for Economic and Community Development.

Since 2018, Fernleaf has worked closely with LOS to support the development of their regional resilience assessment, employing NOAA’s Steps to Resilience framework. The assessment focuses on the effects of flooding, wildfire, and landslides, offering valuable insights for all 25 jurisdictions within the five-county region.

An important component of Fernleaf’s assessments is AccelAdapt, our decision support platform. AccelAdapt transforms assessments into a user friendly, interactive tool, empowering a wide range of stakeholders - planners, GIS specialists, emergency managers, and stormwater managers - to take action.

Leveraging data from the platform’s Commercial and Residential Property and Flooding assessments for LOS, Mary was able to apply for a grant through the North Carolina Land and Water Fund. The assessments offered valuable data that allowed her to quantify vulnerability and risk to provide the grant reviewers with insights on potential outcomes of the proposed projects. This involved identifying how properties could benefit from flood protection or reduced risk, and quantifying the potential advantages for vulnerable people and essential services in the project area.

Using AccelAdapt, 22 residential and 74 commercial properties were identified as being highly vulnerable within the project area - totaling over $300M in building value.

Using the same information from these assessments, the City of Hendersonville, North Carolina Stormwater Department collaborated with Wildlands Engineering to pursue two additional grants for the area of concern. As a result, they received three grants, with a total of $3.5 Million to fund multiple projects in the Lower Mud Creek area of Hendersonville, North Carolina in 2023.

These grants will support a range of initiatives in the project area including property acquisition, floodplain restoration, implementation of stormwater control measures, wetlands management, and ecological restoration.

Interested in learning more? This serves as just one example among many of how our resilience specialists, using the AccelAdapt platform, can provide capacity for building resilience for your community.

Our goal is to ensure that the platform supports users in quickly accessing and understanding their resilience assessments, to enable more informed decision making - and ultimately helping more communities move beyond their assessments.

If you’d like to explore further or have any questions, feel free to contact us today.