GIS-based spatial analysis and web mapping offer powerful tools for communicating about climate hazards and risks to residents, planners, and policymakers. This presentation will demonstrate how we leveraged ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps to support the City of Syracuse’s Climate Vulnerability Assessment for New York State’s Climate Smart Communities Program. We used GIS to visualize climate data, historical weather events, community assets, and vulnerable people and places to aid the city’s efforts to publicly communicate locally relevant climate change risks, including increased extreme weather events, flooding, and heat. The maps reveal uneven geographies of climate risk vulnerability, such as flood-prone neighborhoods, aging infrastructure, and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and present opportunities to empower residents and inform place-based policy interventions at the local scale.
