ICMA’s Knowledge Network is home to a wealth of resources that KN members post in groups, topic pages, and in blogs. I’ve been perusing the site for some documents related to the three CityLinks topic areas and found some I thought I’d share with you all.

I found a new group called Climate Preparedness, Adaptation, and Resilience geared towards professionals who are involved in the process of preparing their cities for climate related disasters. The group is open-- meaning anyone can join, contribute to their discussion thread, and access the documents posted.

One of the resources I was particularly interested in was the Making Cities Resilient Report 2012 published by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), which highlights resilience building activities at the local level. Another report I found listed in the “Files” section of the group was “Value Chain Climate Resilience: A guide to managing climate impacts in companies and communities”, which was developed by companies and organizations involved in the Partnership for Resilience and Environmental Preparedness (PREP), a project designed to address how climate change affects citizens and communities.  One of the group members also posted an interesting article, “Planning A New York City That Can Withstand Climate Change”, which explains how NYC plans to transform a four-mile stretch of land into parkland accessible to the public. The East River borders this strip of land and often overflows during powerful storms, threatening to flood nearby housing developments. In the next few years, the city will construct barriers to ward off the flooding.

The Sustainable Communities Blog recently added a new blog entry announcing the launch of a solar outreach website that provides a resource database, a calendar of events and trainings, and access to “Ask the Expert” services. This website is part of the SunShot Solar Outreach Partnership, a project dedicated to equipping local governments with solar energy information.

To learn more about CityLinks, visit our website.  Click here to get more information on ICMA’s Center for Sustainable Communities and please visit ICMA International’s site to find out about the projects ICMA implements around the world.