 Hi, welcome to Policy Alternatives for Resilient Heritage in the Sunshine State. This is a great opportunity for us to tell you a little bit about one state's forward-looking approach to how to address issues of climate change, sea level rise, and disaster resilience. Joining me today, Lisa Craig, that is, with the Craig Group, is Angela Shadell, who is Vice President of Community Resilience for Taylor Engineering, and Tom Schofield, who is the Principal Planner and Historic Preservation Specialist from Pinellas County Planning Division. So we're going to be talking about a number of items, some information regarding what climate risk is, strategies for adaptation and mitigation. Public policy is the theme, so we'll be addressing some public policy initiatives in place at both the state and local level in Florida. We'll be looking at prevention, which is one of the FEMA-recognized alternatives in hazard mitigation planning, and those would include everything from land use policy to financial incentives, again, very much policy-related. Integrating state and local planning is critical, so how historic and cultural resource has been into that. And through some case studies in Florida, we'll be reviewing how communities have incorporated the policy issues into climate resilience planning, and then a few takeaways for those of you interested in getting your own start in this effort in climate and disaster resilience planning. So there is no doubt that we have seen some dramatic changes. Climate change has impacted many areas of our country, whether we're looking at wildfires in the west or we're looking at tornadoes and severe storm events, hurricanes in the southeast, high wind events, durations in the Midwest and all the way to the northeast coast. This is just 2021 events, and we see that this continues into 2022. We know that there are going to be future needs for understanding adaptation and mitigation in light of these major climate change events. So let's talk a little bit about how we differentiate those terms. Adaptation is really about how we live with natural hazards. Some of us may be in the historic preservation field familiar with the concept of elevating buildings. That is an adaptation strategy. Mitigation, however, is about taking actions to reduce risk to people and infrastructure. And so that's another aspect in terms of what can be done to reduce the impact of greenhouse gases on our community. And as we all know, the greenest building is the one that already exists. So mitigation is also another aspect of historic preservation. Communities and property owners often combine these two together to manage hazards and exposure and to address issues of vulnerability through mitigation planning and policy and public awareness. So Florida has significant numbers of historic resources risk from sea level rise. As you can see, this is something that was provided by the Florida Division of Historical Resources way back in 2013. Likely we know these numbers have increased since that time. But we are looking at thousands, tens of thousands of historic resources now at risk along with significant archaeological sites in both the one meter or three foot three inches of sea level rise or the two meters six feet six inches almost seven inches of sea level rise. So we will be seeing continued threats in the southeast particularly in Florida as we move forward in the future and historic and cultural resources will need to adapt. This last slide I want to talk about is really how we reduce risk. Integrating planning efforts, whether it's the comprehensive plan, your local preservation plan, hazard mitigation planning, parks and recreation plans, conservation plans, adaptation or climate risk plans, all of these need to incorporate historic resources to protect those assets but they also need to work very closely together. So we all begin with identifying the initial risk to our historic assets then we look at opportunities in zoning and in building codes to adapt those resources still while being sensitive to their historic character. We need to communicate risk to property owners of those historic properties or the larger historic community. We need to have the basics and evacuation plans for main street areas or heritage sites. We need to look at ways to store water and we need to look at ways to create barriers, levees and flood walls that might appropriately work in certain historic areas. Then we get down to the individual homeowner or business level. What are you doing with your historic building to better reduce risk of flooding? Do you have adequate insurance and whatever remaining residual risk is out there you have addressed by dealing with all of these other policy and adaptation approaches first. Now turn it over to Angela to give us additional information and perspective. Great thanks Lisa. So as a coastal engineer working here in my home state of Jacksonville, Florida I've had the opportunity to work with Lisa Craig for the last 10 years and I really appreciate everything that she's done with historic preservation and the reason she has added me to her team is because I get to look at assessing what those risks are. So some recent work we've done is for the city of St. Augustine here in northeast Florida. Where we've looked at different flood events and done some vulnerability assessments as well as adaptation planning for the historic resources there. The picture you see here on the left is Historic City Hall in St. Augustine with a sunny day flood event which unfortunately is happening more and more and I'll talk about what we're looking at with planning, how we assess these risks and then what the state of Florida is doing in terms of policy. So it's interesting when we look at coastal flooding we're seeing these excessive rainfall events or flash flood events that are happening more regularly. Some sunny day flooding as is shown in the picture where it just happens to be an excessively high tide at certain times of year when that happens and it just causes the roads to flood with the water coming up through the gravity storm water drains. Storm surge is one of those big events that in hurricane season we're all very aware of and can be predicted and we can look out and see that hurricane coming across the ocean and have an idea of what that surge will be and then sea level rises kind of a long-term stressor that's been increasing over time. So if you go to the next slide I'll talk about just specifically in St. Augustine you can go back when Lisa or Lisa and I have recently done our work. So we finished up our study of resilient heritage in the city of St. Augustine and right after we finished our report the client sent me these two pictures and it was just very eye-opening of like this is the motivation of why we do these vulnerability assessments to identify risk. I mean we identified that this area right here downtown the picture on the left is right in front of the fort at Castillo de San Marco that's downtown St. Augustine if you're familiar and the picture in the center is actually a historic seawall that is on the left and my company Taylor Engineering had built a new higher seawall on the right. What you're seeing is this wasn't any type of big storm surge event it just happened to be you know three inches of rain nor'easter winds and it also happened to happen you know it occurred at the Perigee and Spring tides so that the king tides are highest high tides of the year. What's really neat is the city is proactive on these things so they actually have a flooding online tool and so you can see on the right that's just some graphics of where citizen science was taking pictures and posting hey it was flooding on my street or here's where my car was flooded and they received 42 reports just in that about two and a half day period of flooding so it's definitely very important to think about you know where to help the cities understand where the flooding is coming from what's causing it before we can figure out you know what is vulnerable and then how to plan for it. If you go to the next slide there's another flood event this one happened exactly a week later after the one in the previous slide once again my client was sending me pictures I was driving in the middle of this one this was just a crazy rain event I mean I don't if you know rainfall five inches and eight hours is a lot even in Florida I mean it felt like a monsoon and you can see that's the police officer blocking off the road into historic downtown um St. Augustine and once again this was another high tide event and what you see here is now a storm surge event so I've just talked about you know a flash flood and then you know I talked about a king tide event and now here you're looking at you know two significant hurricanes back to back in 2016 and 2017 that affected the city of St. Augustine what's interesting about these is that that historic seawall that we had done a higher wall to protect the historic seawall on it that was built in 2014 and what's interesting about it is we built it to the seven foot NABD-88 datum which happens to be the 100 year or the one percent annual chance storm surge happens to occur there and if you look at you can see the graphics there on the third the third column is that both Matthew and Irma actually crested right at that kind of seven foot NABD-88 so the wall did work as designed it reduced flooding impacts but it's ironic now the picture that I showed you from just two years ago was that the water was once again coming up through the gap the gravity drains coming up through the storm water so if you go on to the next slide I want to talk about just what happens to the the economy you know the heritage tourism within city of St. Augustine the report that Lisa and I did we had Don Ripkama from Place Economics come and do a assessment on what is the value of heritage in St. Augustine and he used this very unique travel cost method it's typically used for costing out the value of natural environmental resources and you're looking at what is the price of that someone would travel from an area to this historic area to to visit you know where are they originating from how long are they staying how much money are they spending and just looking at what happens to the essentially the tourism economics in in a flood event you can see the value of value of heritage in St. Augustine he competed to almost three billion dollars which has been a great benefit to the city because the city of St. Augustine their chief resilience officer recently applied for 11 grants and was able to get many millions of dollars using this as to say you know we have this three billion dollar heritage tourism that if we're not if it's if it's not able if we're not able to access it then you know that the city really suffers as do as do the jobs and the people so if you go to the next slide I really want to talk about what we discovered during this the study we talked to the National Park Service and we were able to get daily ticket counts so just as people were walking in how many people walked in to the National Park Services Fort and we had daily attendance for about a five-year period the graphic on the left is showing the blue was kind of what the attendance looks like so it tends to be peak upon a weekend or during a holiday this in this case it was going to be Columbus Day that was going to peak on and the orange is actually what happened with Hurricane Irma in 2017 the hurricane happened it was actually announced at that first blue vertical line it occurred during that second vertical line you could see the steep drop off in attendance of people attending the monument but then after the hurricane you can see it takes almost a month for the actual attendance to recover to the level that it was so if you think about in terms of any heritage tourism in your in your city or municipality you've got issues if you know that you've got restaurants and hotels and your parking meters you're expecting those revenues and then you have a storm event and if you're not prepared for it or you can't be resilient and recover really quickly you'll have some issues so to the next slide I as an engineer I can't ever you know talk about sea level rise and not show you a big graphic so what you're seeing on the y-axis is global mean sea level since the 1880s and on the bottom it's a it's dates from 1880 until 2020 and what I want you to see is that red line there is just showing the trend of mean sea level globally over you know the past 140 years and what we're seeing is that the trend has more than doubled just in the last 20 years we're just seeing a huge acceleration and this is just taking data from all over the world and um compiling it and we're seeing this all along the coast what's happening with sea level rise though is it's causing it's exacerbating these events like storm surge or king tides or flash floods because our our gravity driven sewer system storm sewer just just can't really feed out like it needs to the next slide is really pertinent to florida and as a fifth generation florida native I I find it shocking but at the same time it's history right so the graphic on the left is just in geologic time 120 000 years ago sea level was 20 feet higher we know this because that green outline we can find you know megalodon sharks teeth up in some of the creeks that are inland in florida now so we know that there are historic beaches there but then if you go to the middle graphic 18 000 years ago during the last ice age when there was more water up in the ice caps above the land you can see the sea level was 420 feet lower and you can actually see that big shelf that florida was and they're sorted today so this isn't unheard of we've been you know much higher than we are now and much lower than we are now it's it's a definitely just a trend that we're having more sea level rise currently so you might might ask what's the state doing about it the state of florida actually has a very robust resilience program in 2020 the legislature with bipartisan support passed this study essentially the legislation said that any state funded major construction along the coast has to look at sea level rise and they have to do a sea level impact projection study on that state funded construction my company at taylor was I was honored with the state asked me to help essentially take the coastal engineering brains at my company and put it into this and we created an algorithm that now outputs a very simple but robust tool that shows different adaptation strategies and kind of what the impact of sea level rise would be on these construction sites so this is a publicly available website um fdep slip the next slide will show you other um interesting legislation that the state of florida has done so predating slip in 25th in um we had the peril of flood but also just this past year we had the resilient florida bill this was actually passed unanimously through both the senate and the house which is kind of unheard of in florida when it comes talking about resilience and sea level rise but provided five hundred and twenty million dollars in grant funding for the state which is a huge amount of money what that funding provides is money for vulnerability assessments for looking at what is really vulnerable and for implementations those adaptation or mitigation planning like lisa talked about and the graphic I have in the orange in the number four on the bottom right shows that one of the critical assets that the state is in focused on that they will provide funding for is historical resources so if you happen to be in the state of florida and you're a historic preservation planner know that resilient florida grants are available to you to help protect critical assets and the state does see natural cultural and historic resources as very important similarly in 2015 we had a parallel flood statute we call it parallel flood because it required all coastal governments to look at what is the peril of flood and actually right within their comprehensive planning what is going to occur in the future with high tide storm surge flash floods and sea level rise mapping is required and they have to look at you know what what does it look like in terms of the the city or the county's planning in the future and how will sea level rise affect it so it's pretty progressive that it was seven years ago when we necessarily didn't have a governor that was excited about this but we had some planning staff that was excited about it and then similarly we had some adaptation action areas which is on the next slide and the triple a as we call them was created in legislature even prior to 2015 back in 2011 and it is a designation within the comprehensive plan that allows all coastal communities to essentially set aside like a special area to prioritize funding for resilience and the graphic on the right you can see Lisa and I just did a study for city of Fort Lauderdale and they back in 2013 had did a pilot study on adaptation action areas and all the areas in gray there happen to be the adaptation action areas and all those dots are different projects that they are currently looking at funding with their capital improvements plan you can't really see it in the graphic but we looked at historic resources specifically and in the pink and the green and the center of the screen in some of the historic districts they're actually going to be putting a lot of funding into some capital improvements that directly impact the historic areas so it's just it warms my heart to know that you know this legislation started you know back in 2011 and we've progressed to the point where now they're actually putting a lot of funding behind it so it's nice to know that Florida is on the front side of this and we're leading the way and then in closing I just wanted to show some you know collaboratives I think intergovernmental cooperation is so important with this and Lisa will talk more about this with planning but you know what we're seeing emerge is the southeast Florida regional climate compact came out with unified sea level rise projections for the four counties in south Florida who are also seeing other ones southwest Tampa Bay east central northeast Florida where you're looking at you know five or seven counties and you know up to 50 cities are getting together and saying hey let's pool our resources and apply for these grants together and let's do sea level rise planning and adaptation all on the same scale so it's I think collaboration is a really good way to to advance the science and sea level rise and resilience planning and then finally the takeaways that I have are just you know for the national audience I know everyone listening isn't from Florida but make sure you're collaborating across those jurisdictional boundaries I mean coastal flooding doesn't know boundaries it doesn't say oh there's a county line I'm going to stop there you know make sure you're talking to all the municipalities and the counties and other regional entities we find that historic preservation planners they learn a lot from each other and sometimes the county can really help the city and maybe they have different pots of money they're looking at and connecting a vulnerability assessment is a really good way of understanding what are the risks of flooding and what are the assets that are vulnerable then looking at how do you prioritize assets you know which ones should we adapt which ones should we mitigate and which ones might we have to retreat and then looking at the grant opportunities there are a lot on the national scale I know um Lisa's going to talk about this a little bit more and Tom will cover some of the stuff they're doing in Pinellas County but then specifically in Florida if you're in Florida you know reach out to a consultant about resilient Florida grant program or just google it um thanks for listening now I'd like to introduce Tom Schofield who's the historic preservation specialist for Pinellas County thank you Angela appreciate it um and just a quick sidebar as we are recording this session the trajectory of a tropical depression in the Caribbean is headed for the west coast of Florida so by the time this is broadcast we'll have known the outcome of that but you know I've already received that emergency operations center notice saying hey logistics team which I'm a part of as a planner saying um you know be ready here we go um so we will we'll see how that all moves forward I'm like pulled this year um Pinellas County this being a place-based conference that the National Trust is holding Pinellas is a peninsula on a peninsula we are in the Tampa Bay region um we are a peninsula feature on the west coast of Florida in Tampa Bay the city you might recognize in Pinellas County is St. Petersburg or the city of Clearwater were renowned for our beaches uh Pinellas is the Spanish word for penals which is pine lands the Spanish as they were documenting the Florida coastline um mentioned pine lands as they were entering Tampa Bay in their documentation of the bay we were established in 1912 we're not the youngest state in the Florida but by far we are not the oldest either we are 280 square miles we are the second smallest in area in the state of Florida we have 588 miles of coastline and that's every edge of the barrier island every you know bay cove along our coastline and we are one of 35 coastal counties so we've got a lot of coastal coastline to manage um we are the sick most populous county in Florida approaching a million people as per the 2020 census um we are also the densest populated county in the state of Florida in the southeast in fact we are built out there are no rural areas in penals county we are built out kind of the county boundaries um we have a 0.4 population growth so for a state that is growing so fast we are the second slowest growing county but that's because we're built out um we rely heavily on the tourism industry we've had 15.2 million visitors in 2019 which broke records we are on track here in 2022 to break that record set back in 2019 people enjoy our visiting penalis on a regular basis and that includes heritage tourism as part of our offerings on our average age you think florida's full of old people well we're not the oldest county but we have the average age of 48.8 in florida 42.2 and that's above the national average um delving into historic resources i'd like you to pay attention to the blue dots on this GIS map and the left side these are what we've documented over the past 50 years since there's been a state historic preservation office since we've had a florida master site file our statewide inventory of historic resources that we lot rely on the florida division of historical resources to maintain for us within uh those resources like all counties the majority the lion share are structures just over 13 000 structures documented 485 archaeological sites 81 bridges 43 cemeteries and 104 resources such things as roadways train uh rightaways and the like um designated resources i'm surprised to find that well over 50 of our inventory are designated documented historic resources listed on the national reserve historic places or locally designated by one of our seven certified local governments we have seven certified local governments in our county um that includes one national historic landmark um and uh a variety of historic districts the lion share of our um designated historic properties are contributing properties in historic districts next slide um so i want to share with you some of our challenges that we're facing here in panellas county um you know some don't see it as is is an issue you know like every issue there's two sides to every coin one way we can look at is local government fragmentation we have 24 jurisdictions um it becomes at times a hurting the cats exercise when you're dealing with 24 jurisdictions um this is uh the seals and logos of all of our jurisdictions in panellas county next slide also here's a GIS map if you notice um that sky blue area in florida we're one of those states where the county takes over responsibility in unincorporate areas if you're not a municipality county accent behaves kind of like the 25th municipality in panellas county we have our own sordani ordinance we implement building code regulations we offer and have to regulate every area in panellas county that is not part of the municipality so we're in a way the 25th municipality and a lot of our responsibilities and this here's a list of our municipalities those highlighted in bold and with an asterisk are our certified local governments you see st petersburg done even tarpon springs belfort st p beach in belair those are the partners we're starting the county is starting with in terms of they've demonstrated a commitment at the local level to historic preservation and we'll be partnering with our certified local governments as um this unfolds this new program we're introducing the second challenge we face in panellas county so the university of florida did a statewide study um of the mid-century historical period it is defined as the period 1945 to 1975 this represents in panellas county so many historical resources so now i you see the same map again on the on the left hand side i want you to pay attention to the red dots this time the red dots represent the structures that are unsurveyed and i did a little bit of quick math on here we have 202 thousand structures built before 1976 if you'll recall recall my previous slide we thought we were doing pretty good having surveyed over 13 000 in the past 50 years well guess what we've got a heck of a number two structures left to survey if we're to follow our commitment as a certified local government we are to pay attention and survey buildings 50 years of age older that in panellas county represents 189 000 plus structures that were um qualified for survey um i attended a florida trust for store preservation conference a few years ago uh ruben acosta from the florida division of historical resources whose the responsibility is the florida master site file he told us statewide there are currently 230 000 plus resources statewide we have to survey almost that much in panellas county alone in order to catch up also when you begin looking at the past surveys we've done we've averaged about four since about 1989 we've averaged about 400 structures surveyed and that's dot surveys that's local municipalities looking at downtown areas historic neighborhoods and the like so if we keep going at that average it'll take 473 years to do a complete our backlog well that's not going to cut it is it um also at a rate of completing a master site file of 150 per master site file it would cost us 23 million dollars to survey 189 000 structures well as you know i don't think anybody in our local government's going to pony up that kind of cash to do a survey it is a time for a new methodology and i'll talk about more of that in the minute our third challenge we are a coastal county we have flood risk that flood risk comes from storm events uh sea level rise that we're facing and that sunny day tide that angela was talking about we have those issues in our communities as well here in panellas county here's what i call the scary slide these are images taken from our local mitigation strategy that document we prepare collectively for fema the county and its 24 municipalities got together and here's an opportunity for us to have dialogue and conversation and collaboration when we prepare our local mitigation strategy and update our local mitigation strategy we're all of us are talking as communities together as we prepare this document as you can see our high risk includes floods of your storm events and tropical storms makes sense right also in that fine print there if you notice noa came out this year 2022 hey tampa bay you need to be paying attention to the fact that you'll have roughly 11 to 31 inches of sea level rise by 2050 so we need to be not looking at the low or intermediate we need to be looking at intermediate high to high in terms of what the science is telling us and as planners that's we're definitely looking at the high end of these sea level rise scenarios just based on what the science is telling us over the past few years um if you could go back Lisa real quick i just want to point out the two images there from our local mitigation strategy the image on the left is sea level rise by 21 100 the panel panels kind of becomes the no longer a peninsula on a peninsula it becomes an archipelago along and you can see um a category five storm event at uh king tide at the worst scenario high tide that image on the on the right one of these could hit us this or next year so this is a very real peril peril flood as angel mentions and as the florida legislation requires us to look at and as you can see that um storm surge over panellas county touches a whole lot of the county there's not much of the county that's untouched with a cat five type storm like hurricane michael was in the florida panhandle uh so let's talk about we've identified some issues let's begin talking about some of the solutions we're looking at here in panellas county we have the florida master side file it's been around since you know the 1970s um it's um not a list of designated significant historic resources it's more like the phone book using it i'm dating myself using an old analogy but everybody's phone numbers in the phone book right so every historic resource that we've looked at and documented doesn't mean it's significant that's why we look at those designations as they're significant if you remember that previous slide 56 percent of our florida master side file inventory is deemed significant so um we rely heavily on the state and the florida master side file but there's certain aspects of the master side file that just are not meeting our local needs so it's time for us to look at having um actually we have codified in the panellas county code a county um wide inventory and it's referred to as the panellas register of historic resources so here is an opportunity for us to create a county wide inventory for the 24 municipalities and the county to be looking at our historic resources collectively to have that data at our fingertips and in the event of a storm event um have that information available on tablets on phones as those recovery teams go into the field after kind of the damage is done and those storm waters recede so we have just begun developing the panellas register of historic resources um our contract in the university of florida to provide that for us and it will contain a lot more data than the master side file but it will also be hopefully seamless with the master side file so we're just embarking on this local inventory but intend to make it seamless with our statewide inventory and that's something we're endeavoring and we'll be working in coordinating with our emergency management department our resiliency office to make this data in a GIS in a geodatabase format available to anyone who wants to look at it except archaeological resources i have to throw that in um that is specialized information that is for certain eyes only we don't want looting of archaeological sites we cannot in the state of florida publish uh locational information on our archaeological sites but everything else to store buildings historic sites that sort of thing can be available to the general public who are municipalities as a resource tool something else we're looking at um you know with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the left hand side you know the county is with its cities are beginning to look at the idea of legacy businesses i know several cities across the nation are looking at the issue of legacy businesses um here are three that we have lost a COVID-19 pandemic we have a beloved used bookstore that's been open for well over 50 years the family has not opened the doors since the COVID pandemic in the shutdown that is a beloved building and a historic building in that middle um slide you see um biff's burgers um if you know in the southeast biff burgers was a franchise a chain of a hamburger chain in the early 1960s kind of survived into the 70s had 70 outlets at 70 plus outlets at one point biff stands for best in fast food what franchise architecture still remains i mean it is so it is immediately gone when that franchise changes their images or appearance the brand or goes out of business and that site is cleared um we a couple came in and and reoccupied this biff burgers but um they just couldn't handle the closing during the shutdown during COVID and they could not reopen so um right now our interesting little franchise building down in st petersburg area is kind of vulnerable because it's closed and not available also when you begin looking at some of these more esoteric resources things like the the wagon wheel flea market in the panellas park area which is kind of south central panellas county we um we lost the flea market the family decided they have 30 acres and when you begin looking at um 30 acres in sorry about that background nose i didn't shut my cell phone off um 38 acres of undeveloped land which a flea market basically is um they decided we can't open and there was a huge produce section of to that flea market that produce market um uh just closed up and um when i attended before COVID hit that produce market had most interesting produce stuff i've never seen before in my life now it's kind of a produce desert with that flea market closed and those produce vendors gone off to other locations so we begin looking at historic resources a little bit differently how would i record this on the master site file well a little bit esoteric in in something like a flea market area um but we want to understand kind of these beloveds um legacy small businesses in a way that's a little bit different than how we've been doing historic resource inventories in the past so that's some of the challenges we're facing in panellas county also um as angela mentioned um we have that resilient florida regis legislation here that we can take advantage of in um florida we've got to begin looking at locally what are we going to be calling our critical historic assets that's 7600 plus buildings listed on the national register well a local government may not deem that a critical historical asset every single one of those 7600 buildings may not be deemed in sites may not be deemed as as critical assets so we want to begin kind of developing a methodology and what you know can be considered historical asset either publicly or privately owned and i have three examples here the donkeys are hotel and st peat beach it's right on the beach um it's one of our beautiful um um uh mediterranean revival structures um you know it's already listed in the national register it is an economic engine for that city the city of st peat beach also that second slide you look at the greek town district that's a slide with a sunday flooding no one wants to drive their car there that's brackish water no one wants to drive down uh free with salt water affecting their car in it so just like angel had that great graphic in st augustine that shows kind of a shutdown from sunday day flooding or a tropical storm or hurricane event this community has shut down as long as dodeca needs boulevard that main access artery into the sponge docks district is suffering from sunday day flying and flooding and each year we see more and more days that are sunday day flooding and also something is esoteric is an archaeological site uh this is a county um this is our national historic landmark it is a temple mound on the tampa bay shoreline um we've got high visitation at the park this is one of the critical cultural resources that is part one of those park amenities the county owns it it is on a shoreline we've got to start looking at sea level rise and the impact on our initial national historic landmark um so it's a little bit different um but definitely we can consider a critical asset and part of our economy and part of those assets that we value here in penels county so that gives you some ideas of some of the things we're beginning to look at a second solution is a a new historic structure survey methodology how do we survey those 189 000 structures that were you know built before 1976 well what we're doing is we're parsing the data you know basically i'm not going to read every one of these steps in the slide but we're working with a florida master site file in the state to develop a month methodology a windshield survey methodology some of you in other states may have kind of a reconnaissance or windshield survey methodology that you use regularly here in florida that's not been actively used but the state's now beginning to recognize after hurricane michael when uh cities like mexico beach were wiped out and there were not florida master site files for any of those buildings that are now gone after our category five storm event the state staff realizes that hey if we get some fields of data and a photo into an inventory we're that much further ahead so we're beginning the idea of a windshield descending upon our neighborhoods here in penels county at doing windshield survey just to get data into our local inventory and eventually into that statewide inventory but heaven forbid should account five tip penels county um buildings are removed or demolished or disappeared um we will have a record of what those buildings haven't once stood there once we get into this we're not well into this yet and hopefully let's hope that tropical depression and the Caribbean's not it doesn't turn into a cat fight because it won't be not too good a shape in that regard but this methodology that talks about having that inventory in our hands at the local level that can be used for deployment after um during recovery after a storm event and we're not quite there yet but um we're working towards that um in the left slide again there's a gis map that shows you kind of all those red dots in the flood zone areas um these are areas that we're focusing on working with our six municipal clg's in inventorying those neighborhood neighborhoods in the special flood hazard area basically about nine feet above sea level was what that translates into here in uh florida at least in our our region um and we are um kind of stratifying this and we're also looking at low to moderate income neighborhoods so we're starting with structures in the special flood hazard area and then we add that ish additional layer and so we reduced that 189 000 structures to about 55 000 structures still kind of a yeoman's task to take on but at least that number is is reduced and we can prioritize it's kind of a triage approach to doing survey also um you know it's so important to not just go out there on the street and do you we have a phone app that university florida is sharing with us that we can kind of click click walk down the street that archival research talking to the generational families that live in these neighborhoods is so important you look in the right hand slide you think kind of referred to this type of architecture as mid-century meh but the story that's why it's so important to do the archival analysis behind these buildings this um an african-american doctor decided he was going to build this office outside of the red line district in st petersburg so you see that single story building on the right in this photograph that we built his office two years later when major league baseball started to come to florida for spring training and the african-american players would not stay with the white players in the hotel he built six apartments on site and that's what you see in this two-story building on the left hand side those are apartments for major league baseball players to stay in when they were down here for spring training wonderful story and we just would not have known that story if we hadn't done that archival and talking with the family research and so we can never you know kind of jettison the whole idea of doing that important historical background research on these on these properties next slide all right solution number three we are developing a countywide flood mitigation strategy just like how we have 189,000 historic buildings or structures to survey we've got a whole lot of area to to do a flood mitigation strategy and we're starting in and as angela mentioned you know flood water is no no municipal boundary no no boundaries so they don't care if there's a municipal boundary there or not so the county's drawing within our municipalities on this flood mitigation strategy and we're looking at I think watershed this is a playing approach by watershed we'll be looking at five project areas that are watersheds in our county to begin looking at a flood mitigation strategy at those adaptation strategies angela mentioned we're a couple of years behind communities like miami beach uh fort lauderdale st augustine and some of our planning but you know we understand that we need to get into this so our countywide flood mitigation strategies approach we're taking and at least beginning in areas um from a watershed perspective and looking at the effects of flood water develop water modeling tools and techniques that we can adapt and demonstrate to the general public to planners and municipalities to property owners what the effect of sea level rise and flood waters have on properties district wide this flood visualization software if you can envision a google car driving up and down the street well we're going to have a terrestrial lidar scanner on top of a car that drives up and down every street in special flood hazard area in panellas county that's basically going to create terabytes of information a point cloud you apply to that structural imagery that gives you a feel for what the community looks like and then you add that flood visualization so um software that shows you to level ride or and or a category storm event and what it looks like and you begin it really assists in aids and planning and we will have that for special flood hazard areas in two years time for panellas county angela mentioned the critical assets we need to be looking at um that class four of critical assets includes historical and cultural assets we are embarking with our municipalities and neighborhoods and communities with what do you see as those critical assets um lisa's done lisa craig's done some great work in tarpon springs already getting out of the gate on this conversation identify those adaptation action areas and adaptation strategies well when you look at the sponge dock in tarpon springs retreat does not mean you have to relocate or an adaptation strategy is not really retreat if you move to the high dry land along us 19 in panellas county well you don't really have sponge docks with boats anymore you know we have to have a different adaptation strategy for some of our historic districts and our historic resources so these adaptation strategies may look a little different than um some of the other adaptation strategies being pondered um also the vulnerability assessments in florida we are really wrapping our heads around these assessments and in order to qualify to use resilient flow of money critical historical and cultural assets have to be in your vulnerability assessment that is a key tie to this whole program and then the whole idea of projects list in a funding strategy for what we do to um look at all of our critical assets hospitals roadways bridges and those historical assets that are important to our local heritage tourism economy so important to wrap our heads around this slide um i wanted um for our audience um please check out the university of florida's um envisioned cedar key this is available if you google do a google search for envisioned cedar key you will find they've got a great um esri story map on what they've done in downtown cedar key and you will see some visualization that looks like actual flood waters coming down the streets of cedar key it is all virtual and digital in this creation it is a great story map that i um encourage you to take a look at and there's a hot link here to that but just google uh envisioned cedar key in that university of florida product this is an example of what we want to do county wide and our special flood heads so there is a small example of what we want to do on a much grander scale but i wanted to include this because it's already done and this is a great example that university of florida's prepared um just real quick um my takeaways for our audience is to customize that statewide or citywide research inventory um like angel already missing communicate and collaborate locally regionally and at the state levels and also integrate your preservation program with your local emergency management and resiliency offices we've got to be doing that in historic preservation and we're working hard to do that here in panellas county so thank you very much back to you lisa and uh appreciate your mentioning the integration of plans because that's what i may be talking about next is the effort to integrate planning uh tom spoke about mitigation planning in florida local mitigation strategies are uh the approach to how we create greater resilience and adaptation particularly for our historic resources as we heard they are recognized as critical assets and this is something also i would point to the state of maryland as well as the state of massachusetts which are now realizing that in local planning efforts it's important to incorporate all uh cultural values cultural sites and historic sites so mitigation strategy or plan is required if you're to receive federal mitigation grants if you have historic resources mentioned in your hazard mitigation plan as in need of adaptation or planning for both uh an event and recovery from events then you have a hook into the federal and state funding that is provided uh towards preservation planning and towards disaster resilience and climate planning so they are updated every five years those hazard mitigation plans and that planning really looks at five different approaches it's a mitigation plan that's the planning framework within which historic preservation would fit in planning for climate and disaster resilience but it is truly for us we adapt our resources because too often mitigation is looked at as perhaps even an issue of demolition or relocation and obviously we work as hard as we can uh to to develop a means to adapt to uh future conditions so natural resource protection uh is one way to look at it how we're using nature-based strategies uh how we're looking at uh means to uh restore natural environments that may be part of an environmental setting for a significant uh cultural archaeological or historic site there are structural projects structural projects are the things we most commonly think about sea walls uh even large berms that are created property protection is really where it comes down to what are we doing to that individual property are we elevating it are we flood proofing it are we creating uh other types of barriers that can keep water away from that particular site public education and awareness is where we all can start simple steps creating more information getting it out there during preservation month or during um uh national preparedness uh month in september or just prior usually hurricane awareness month uh or week whatever the case may be in may and then prevention what are we doing at the policy level to make it easier uh to ensure that that we are creating policies codes uh that are sympathetic historic resources but at the same time moving towards adaptation um this was something uh that uh angela mentioned earlier so regional partnerships resiliency partnerships and cooperation uh happening to work in the Tampa Bay area we reviewed as part of some of our work for tarpon springs the Tampa Bay regional resiliency coalition we pulled this information out of their plan um the whole point of this collaboration effort is to secure increased levels of federal funding to support what are regional infrastructure improvements adaptation mitigation programs and as angela also mentioned understanding the needs of properties and the local economies to better prepare for these major events so uh tom spoke about panellas's local mitigation strategy i've got a qr code though if you'd like to take a more detailed look you can actually uh snap an image of that with your camera while i'm chatting and hold it for future review but in essence uh the the lms the local mitigation strategy for nesca for panellas county um did give us a roadmap in tarpon springs as he mentioned for the work that we are doing there so as you can see um it addresses the issue of um what must be done in panellas uh from different aspects even including the benefits associated with planning by looking at vulnerable areas um creating a one-stop shop to identify how people buildings and infrastructure are exposed to hazards again a lot of public awareness um looking at the floodplain management plan updating that uh this creates an opportunity as well having a plan to reduce your flood insurance premiums i can't underscore that more something called a community rating system which we could do an entire presentation on or not but every time your community does something to reduce risk it is also reducing the cost of insurance to property owners and in essence developing a blueprint for a consistent focused course of action moving forward to reduce disaster impacts so what's tarpon springs been doing so within the local mitigation strategy for the community of tarpon springs which uh my firm was uh fortunate to be working with the university of florida to develop a adaptation and resilience plan we looked at what was already underway what projects were anticipated some funded some not funded but these are the items that were in there and it just as angela referred to the fact that there is work underway in the historic districts in fort lauderdale there is actually uh prioritization and project planning if not already funded projects underway in the historic areas of tarpon spring so we could never eliminate the fact that they're not we can never say that things aren't being done in historic districts to improve the chances of those properties better sustaining flood waters in the case of a hurricane it's just that they're not necessarily doing it because they are in a historic district so we really need to ensure that when these flooding adaptation strategies are developed that we have front and center as preservationists those places in our communities where we know that tourists come where there is a bottom line benefit of historic preservation and where we know residents have a great need to protect their historic irreplaceable assets so tarpon springs florida it is a self-proclaimed world center for the sponging industry the greek community in establishing that area really uh put their mark on tarpon springs a wonderful community uh shrimpers later came on the african-american communities well represented um there is a greek town historic district which is a national register traditional cultural property it is tied to the greek community and the resources um are valued as much for their cultural expressions and the stories as tom referred to earlier as the architectural character the tarpon springs is the national register and the locally designated historic district and we were fortunate to start working in the union academy name for hood an african-american community learning more about their resources identifying those areas and properties that should be individually landmarked locally if not necessarily national register qualified it is a heritage tourism-based economy it has increasing threats from flooding and high wind and of course as we heard earlier also experiences its own share of nuisance or sunny day flooding these are the types of assets that are there in the community they are simple historic resources tied with the people that established the community as well as as the industry the sponging industry so you can see they're fairly modest we have a little bit of mid-century modern as you can see in the image to the far bottom left and we also have the the the sponge jocks the commercial storefronts along the greek town historic district and some of the sponge warehouses also i mentioned though not shown here is some of the sponging boats are actually national register listed so we have maritime assets as well it must be protected we are looking at assessing the vulnerability we've completed that we researched past disasters we identified the specific hazard prone areas also including union academy the african-american community we did a lot of public engagement and then through that we developed preservation priorities and recommended adaptation strategies so the adaptation and resilience planning goals are outlined here the building to the left is actually now city hall but was the tarpon springs high school the planning goals are such support disaster adaptation for properties launch a public awareness and education program amend the existing policies and establish new ones that would promote resilience in historic areas not just the districts but within areas that have been determined to be important to greek and african-american history develop some guidance we developed toolkit for disaster risk reduction promote the gis data collection on vulnerable historic resources and then document the culturally significant properties of the african-american community the community within the blunt risk areas of tarpon springs now we also looked at other communities that are dealing with regional cooperation and looked at examples that are in the state of florida this is really moving us towards dealing with a project in fort lauderdale so in terms of prevention which we refer to as policy it's land use planning is one of those items in prevention we looked at the public policy advocacy goals for southeast florida regional compact because again if we were doing work in brower county or in city fort lauderdale we're going to look at regional issues that incorporated the needs of that community within a larger planning effort so the planning provisions for these jurisdictions include coordination of the activities between local governments looking at and incorporating the analysis of climate change and sea level rise in a regional way to identify risk what are some of the infrastructure decisions that need to be made that have the greatest value and do we need to look at relocation of infrastructure in order to support greater resilience in specific areas such as fort lauderdale in miami dade county looking at future development and density increases so that they could reduce the footprint and the growth in those areas that are prone to flood risk and then finally again adaptation action areas a terrific tool and overlay to look at to help prioritize the resilience issues when we came in to start working with fort lauderdale to develop their first preservation plan it was based on what had been identified in the recently completed fort lauderdale comprehensive plan and we were specifically looking at resilience which had been identified this was really how we began this work in fort lauderdale was we needed to look at the resilience goals and objectives the issues of what are the existing environmental conditions what are the priorities for resilience what are the economic and development impacts and then we also went to another objective intergovernmental coordination because it's extremely important for our federal and state preservation agencies to be working with their counterparts in developing these disaster management plans for historic assets so in coordinating at the federal and state level down to the county level for disaster redevelopment and interestingly enough disaster redevelopment plans after a disaster how are we going to look at how we redevelop in those historic areas specifically in fort lauderdale we had some key resources at risk the strand of hand house which you see there in the image is a much visited historic site the haemarshi historic district and the sailboat ben historic district both designated local districts and then eight individually designated historic landmarks so the preservation plan was drafted with a resilience goal to increase the resilience of historic properties and cultural resources to better withstand the threat of flooding and climate related disasters with a survey goal of conducting flood vulnerability assessments contributing properties those had not been done yet in the established historic districts and for any individually designated historic landmarks that gave us some priority again this came from what the community told us were the priorities for a survey a policy goal and incentive objective was to promote the use of tax incentives existing tax incentives in the state of florida and with the national are with the federal rehabilitation tax credit or and to explore the creation of a new local tax incentive for improvements any improvements to properties that could reduce historic property flood risk the other thing we talked about were some examples from other communities there are a lot of other policy approaches to preventing extreme damage to historic properties and reducing flood risk so looking at green infrastructure as a way to protect historic places that would be more mitigation strategy approach even more so than adaptation but even things like rain gardens the simple things that we hear about frequently or green roofs but another innovative idea that came out of boston is this future conditions checklist so when you come in for newer substantial improvements to properties whether it's infill or substantially improving a historic asset uh anticipate what future flooding is going to be and plan your project based on that another approach in historic real rehabilitation is the adaptation strategy basically look at your floodplain management ordinance and recommend changes that encourage resource adaptation rather than an exemption or exception that is to having to meet any of those requirements of reducing risk to properties in historic districts perhaps requiring a phase one archaeological survey for substantial excavation that takes place as part of uh an elevation or relocation of a building develop review procedures for building elevation not just the guidelines which fortunately the national park service has developed those adaptation guidelines for rehabilitation when you're looking at reducing flooding but really look at the means by which your procedures are in place to consider those adaptation measures and then finally work now with historic property district homeowners and commercial property owners to craft future criteria for any mitigation and adaptation act activities that could impact historic resources when you plan ahead if you are talking about a post-disaster development strategy it may involve buyouts it may involve relocation or it may involve future easements work with communities now to decide those important issues before disasters strike and then prevention some of the best practices available in florida i would encourage anyone from any state to look at uh our adaptation planning for historic properties uh as well as disaster planning for historic resources um and then its own approach at the local level is being taken by a number of communities apalachic cola port lauderdale nasaq county uh palm beach county sarasota county st augustine and tarpon springs as you heard today also have ways to incorporate um hazard mitigation planning into preservation plans or vice versa preservation into other type of planning efforts but begin with public awareness and education it is a simple approach bring in a uh a noteworthy speaker uh this happens to a ben john englander when i was in anapolis uh he is a oceanographer and author on issues of sea level rise and and climate impacts he spoke at our local uh rock radio station uh really about this issue to a group of younger individuals obviously they are the future so we need a media or communications campaign to be able to roll out information but there's also some simple things that are funded by fema this high watermark initiative program actually allows you to post interpretive signs you can be creative with developing those interpretive signs and talk about the history of flooding and photos of flooding in your community in the past so this is a means by which you can not only educate your residents but educate visitors to the area about what is at risk through a fema funded grant program and then our takeaways in total you've heard it time and time again integrate all local and state climate or disaster planning efforts to include hazard risk reduction for historic and cultural resources you need to assess how the vulnerability of your properties from all the hazards not just just flooding but also looking at tornadoes looking at earthquakes looking at the the drought or wildfire situations in your community you can do this through reconnaissance survey work you're doing and through flood mapping you can seek funding for planning survey and adaptation not just from your historic preservation office but also from from funding that is available for hazard mitigation work through your state and federal level but do remember it must be in a local plan your projects your planning efforts must be identified in your local plans before you can go to those state and federal sources use recognize planning tools don't start from scratch use the basics that are already in your community if you have a resilience plan a comp plan if you have a adaptation plan a climate action plan a preservation plan use those basics to incorporate historic culture and cultural resources and then again start with building partnerships and regional collaboration those will not only develop agency to agency agreements and priorities they will also set you up for funding sources that may be available that you weren't aware of so I want to take this opportunity to thank our speakers and to let you know all of our contact information we're happy to follow up with questions but also after the conference after pass forward feel free to contact Angela Tom or I at any time thank you for tuning in on this recorded effort and if there's any questions we can answer will be available to do so thank you