The Goal of The RAFT
The goal of The RAFT project is to help all of Virginia's localities improve resilience to a range of challenges relating to climate change while remaining economically and socially viable. These challenges include flooding, storm hazards, heat, and other emerging issues. Local governments in Virginia face daunting challenges affecting residents, businesses, agriculture, forestry, national security facilities, public health, infrastructure, and economic development.
A critical gap in the toolbox of Virginia's localities is an easy and accessible way to define and measure their resilience. The RAFT attempts to fill this gap. While it draws ideas for indicators from many other resilience and sustainability report cards to cover environmental, economic, and social resilience, The RAFT does not rely on a locality's ability to conduct a self-assessment but instead offers the opportunity for an independent, objective assessment.
The RAFT aims to make the scorecard tool available to all Virginia localities facing a variety of new challenges that create new risks for their residents, environment, and economies.
