Draft Mitigation Framework Guiding Principles

Risks associated w/ climate trends e.g. sea level rise (SLR) will place additional populations at risk. Two recent reports published in March 2012 analyzed the vulnerability to SLR and flooding and storm surge. The first found 1 m SLR would place 3.7 million people at risk, some 2150 communities at some degree of exposure, with FL, LA, CA, NY and NJ at greatest risk. The second looked at the influence of SLR on storm surge. That study found that SLR will not only augment water levels by storm surge but the frequency of storm surges will also increase. These changes will impact risk assessments and delineations of 100 yr floodplains.Mitigation alone will not minimize this risk. Adaptation strategies must also be developed. These concepts should be integrated in the mitigation framework.