Climate-Smart Design Assessment Based on Vulnerabilities of Selected Nature-Based Solutions under Consideration for Crisfield, Maryland
To support the city of Crisfield, MD’s coastal community resilience goals and associated decision-making, this climate-smart design assessment evaluates the potential effectiveness of selected nature-based solutions (NBS) in terms of strategic design for long-term robustness in the face of interactive effects of climate change and other stressors. The primary focus is the sustainability of NBS to maintain wave and storm surge attenuation functions along with other benefits, with an eye toward designs that will remain as effective as possible into the future. The objective is to show how vulnerability and resilience information can be used to evaluate strategic design of NBS practices. For this demonstration, we focus on a selected number of generally-representative NBS under consideration by the city of Crisfield, MD (Janes Island artificial reefs, dune restoration, and marsh restoration) to illustrate how resilience considerations can inform climate-smart design and subsequent prioritization, combining, and/or sequencing of NBS for implementation.
Impact/Purpose
This technical summary provides the results of a vulnerability assessment and climate-smart design analysis for selected nature-based solutions (NBS) under consideration for use in Crisfield, MD. There are three parts to the study: a vulnerability assessment that summarizes specific vulnerabilities of each NBS to climate change and other interacting stressors; an analysis of climate-smart considerations for adjusting NBS designs based on those vulnerabilities; and a discussion of how this information could be used for future decision-making by the community. Interested parties for this work would include the city of Crisfield along with any of their collaborators, agencies, or contractors engaged in setting priorities for and implementing NBS projects in the vicinity of Crisfield.Citation
West, J. AND A. Hamilton. Climate-Smart Design Assessment Based on Vulnerabilities of Selected Nature-Based Solutions under Consideration for Crisfield, Maryland. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/S-25/218, 2025.Download(s)
- Supplementary materials_Presentation__Climate-Smart_Design_Assessment_of_Selected_Nature-Based_Solutions_(NBS)_for_Crisfield,_MD (PDF) (20 pp, 1.3 MB, about PDF)
- Report__Climate-Smart_Design_Assessment_Based_on_Vulnerabilities_of_Selected_Nature-Based_Solutions_under_Consideration_for_Crisfield_Maryland (PDF) (42 pp, 1.5 MB, about PDF)