Climate & Natural Resources: Climate Resilience

Building resilience against the effects of climate change

Climate change is already affecting people across northeastern Illinois. Temperatures are rising, storms are becoming more severe, and vulnerable people face growing risks to their health and safety. These impacts are projected to intensify, underscoring the need for action now to both prepare the region for our most significant climate challenges — flooding and extreme heat — and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drive them.

Without significant emissions reductions, the number of days above 95 degrees is projected to increase from today’s average of 2 days per year to roughly 45 days by 2100. More days of extreme heat — combined with higher nighttime humidity that traps and holds heat — pose serious health risks ranging from heat exhaustion to life-threatening heat stroke.

In 2023 and 2024 alone, the region experienced 3 federally declared flooding disasters, with individual storms delivering up to 8 inches of rain in less than 12 hours. Flooding imposes substantial and uneven burdens on households, businesses, and local governments, causing financial strain, health risks, and damaged infrastructure. While flood risks are concentrated in certain communities, their impacts extend across jurisdictions — affecting regional mobility, public health, and economic stability.

CMAP supports resilience by assessing vulnerability, creating and analyzing data related to climate hazards, prioritizing investments, and developing guidance to help the region adapt to changing conditions.

Transportation Resilience Improvement Plan

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) created the Transportation Resilience Improvement Plan (TRIP) to identify where the regional transportation system is vulnerable to extreme weather and climate change and how to make it more resilient.

TRIP informs transportation planning and decision making to help build our region’s resilience to flooding, extreme heat, and severe storms. It also meets the Federal Highway Administration’s PROTECT Program requirements — positioning northeastern Illinois to compete for resilience funds.

As a foundational step, CMAP identified key climate risks and how they impact the system. The Risk-based Vulnerability Assessment (executive summary) found that flooding poses the biggest threat, impacting all transportation infrastructure, service operations, and users. Extreme heat and severe storms impact service operations and active transportation users, also posing a threat to rail infrastructure, electrical service, and backup power.

The assessment produced two data sets, available on CMAP’s Data Hub and as a web map, to help identify projects and support local planning activities. This includes data on asset vulnerability to flooding, and in some cases, extreme heat. The assessment also produced data on transit rider vulnerability to extreme heat at bus stops and train stations.

Transportation Resilience Improvement PlanOpens in a new tab

Flooding

Flooding is one of the most significant and persistent climate challenges facing northeastern Illinois. Over the past decade, the region has experienced numerous flood events that damaged homes and businesses, disrupted daily life, and put people’s safety at risk. These impacts are already widespread, and climate change is expected to further intensify flooding risks in the coming decades.

Flood susceptibility indexes

CMAP developed the riverine and urban flood susceptibility indexes to identify priorities across the region for mitigation activities. Streets and buildings highlighted in the indexes could be more susceptible to overbank flooding, surface ponding, overland flow, water seepage, and basement backups.

Flood resilience investment

As governments in northeastern Illinois invest in flood resilience, prioritizing communities that face disproportionate flood impacts will be crucial to ensure that all residents have access to the resources they need to thrive. CMAP’s flood investment guide shows engineers, planners, and community leaders how to decide on flood resilience investments and highlights successful peer examples.

Stormwater management

Urban flooding is a common concern among the region’s municipalities, but many lack the resources to address flooding issues. For example, a village may know that an area floods regularly, but they may not know why or how to fix it. CMAP’s Guide to Flood Susceptibility and Stormwater Planning details how communities can identify problem areas and causes and identify opportunities for improvements that can reduce flooding.

Creating a stormwater utility

Setting up a stormwater utility provides a dedicated revenue stream for stormwater programs as well as an incentive for property owners to reduce the amount of runoff they generate. CMAP’s Value of Stormwater Utilities for Local Governments in the Chicago Region showcases existing stormwater utilities in Illinois; outlines their legal authority and key components; and lays out an implementation process for establishing a utility.

Heat

Heat is also an issue in northeastern Illinois, and the number of days with extreme high temperatures and the frequency of heatwaves are only expected to increase. Extreme heat does not affect all people equally, posing serious health risks for people who are more vulnerable. Additionally, buildings and pavement play a role in worsening heat waves by trapping heat during the day and releasing it at night — a process known as the heat island effect.

While temperatures are already warmer during the summer, heat, drought, and air quality are particularly tough challenges being worsened by climate change.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends strategies to mitigate and adapt to excessive heat such as: planting vegetation, installing green roofs, and using reflective materials on hard surfaces to reduce heat absorption. Infrastructure resilience improvements include upgrading transportation infrastructure with heat-resistant materials and conserving energy during heat waves.

Planning for resilience

Local planning processes offer an excellent platform for integrating climate science and data into public decision-making. While climate change presents considerable uncertainty at the local scale, the current state of climate science and planning practice offers sufficient data and knowledge that community plans can be made stronger and more proactive with available tools. By including up-to-date climate science alongside a plan’s analysis of demographics and the natural and built environments, planners can provide a foundation for informed decisions about investments in resilience and adaptation.

Climate adaptation for municipalities

The Climate Adaptation Guidebook for Municipalities in the Chicago Region is a resource for communities interested in adapting their planning and investment decisions to a changing climate. Essentially, this means improving resilience to future weather impacts. The central reason for considering climate change is that, in many instances, it will be cheaper and less disruptive to plan for anticipated conditions than to retrofit or rebuild later.

• Appendix A: Primary Impacts of Climate Change in the Chicago Region
• Appendix B: Self-Assessment to Address Climate Change Readiness in Your Community
• Appendix C: Financing Opportunities for Climate Adaptation

Using climate information in local planning

The American Planning Association (APA) has published Using Climate Information in Local Planning: A Guide for Communities in the Great Lakes,.which draws on lessons learned from CMAP’s technical assistance program as well as research with practitioners and experts in planning, disaster preparedness, and climate change. The guidebook can help communities in the Great Lakes region incorporate available climate data into comprehensive and capital improvement plans.

Sustainability planning

TheSustainability Planning White Paper provides a step-by-step overview of the planning process, highlighting unique aspects that differentiate sustainability planning from comprehensive planning. The accompanying Sustainability Indicators Guide provides a blueprint for selecting sustainability indicators and measuring progress on sustainability goals over time.

CMAP does a lot of land use planning at the regional and local scale through its technical assistance program, in an effort to improve resilience by preserving floodplains, expanding tree canopy coverage, providing more transportation options, and more.