TO: Mayor and Commissioners
FROM: Kent Edwards, Sustainability Officer
THROUGH: Terrence R. Moore, ICMA-CM
DATE: September 5, 2023
Title
CITY ADAPTABILITY INDEX SURVEY
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Recommended Action:
Recommendation
Motion to Accept the Survey
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Background:
During the June 6, 2023 Regular Commission meeting, direction was given for staff to investigate the City Adaptabiity Index (CAI). The CAI was developed by WGI working together with Columbia University's Global Leaders in Construction Management. At the June 13, 2023 Regular Commission meeting, staff presented an overview of the CAI, and direction was given for staff to work with WGI to complete the survey, and report the results.
The CAI is a self-assessment tool for cities to benchmark their adaptability to continuous change and disruption. An adaptive city balances lives and livelihoods as well as resilience and sustainability and all the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental external conditions that need to be continuously analyzed and acted upon. As disruption moves from the exception to the norm, cities need to be able to quickly react to change to continuously maximize their strategic goals.
The CAI has 8 sections which correspond to 8 pillars of adaptability. Each pillar represents a business goal of the city such as “Sustainability and Environment”. While each city may have differing priorities, these are universal strategic goals for most cities no matter their size or location. The relative priority of each pillar will differ based on attributes such as city size and location.
The CAI does not test for absolute values such as percent of energy from renewable energy sources (which a sustainability benchmark might ask), but rather the City’s ability to switch dynamically as needed to maintain uptime across the power grid and so on. The focus is always on adaptability and ability to react to opportunities and challenges with intrinsic agility. This helps the city ...
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