Silicon Valley 2.0: Decision-making Tools for Climate Adaptation and Resilience

About the Program

Category: County Resiliency (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The Silicon Valley 2.0 Project (SV20) was an extensive regional effort, designed and managed by the County of Santa Clara Office of Sustainability and funded by the California Strategic Growth Council, to create risk-based decision-making tools to assist with climate adaptation and resilience planning and to minimize the anticipated impacts of climate change within the County (including 15 cities and the County unincorporated areas). SV20 identified community assets threatened by climate change, assessed the magnitude of the potential economic, social, and environmental impacts to them, identified and prioritized potential climate adaptation strategies, and is catalyzing collaboration toward implementing actions needed to support an effective regional-scale response to climate adaptation and resilience planning in the short, mid, and long term. Built on a multi‐year, multi‐stakeholder process, the SV20 Climate Adaptation Guidebook and online Climate Change Preparedness Decision Support Tool capture the key inputs and outputs of SV20. The Guidebook and Tool were designed not as a “plan” to be adopted by one or many jurisdictions, but rather as resources to be used by individual agencies, groups of cities, and/or regional partnerships to prepare a coordinated response to climate change now and ensure that the region continues to thrive in the future.