The University and the city of Austin collaborated to develop a playbook on local environmental policies that was published on Feb. 25. 

The Resilient Austin Playbook is an outline of strategies aimed to enhance the city’s economic resilience against future challenges such as extreme weather and climate change. The University contributed to the Playbook through UT-City CoLab, a climate-based initiative between policymakers and UT researchers, faculty and students. 

Projects in the Playbook include maximizing sustainable infrastructure and implementing reflective coating on pavement to mitigate heat risk in neighborhoods, CoLab researchers said.  

“In the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve seen a lot of increases in sort of extreme weather events, but also economic impacts,” said Marc Coudert, Austin’s climate resilience and adaptation manager. “We want to make sure that we’re learning from those experiences … (and) what can we do to ensure that those uncertainties are not as severe or complex in the community.”

The Playbook defines resilience as the ability of the city to respond to “stressors” in a manner that guarantees the community will be able to “adapt and thrive.” Coudert said the Playbook is a way for Austin to not just define resilience, but communicate what the city is doing to maintain it through projects, goals and strategies. 

“For us, it’s about looking at the whole picture and seeing where we can advance programs and projects that make things better,” Coudert said.

The CoLab has also helped the city on other weather-related projects, including seasonal climate outlooks and a Heat Resilience Playbook. 

“This is an extremely open, porous and fit driven process,” said Dev Niyogi, the co-director of UT-City CoLab and a Jackson School of Geosciences professor. “We look forward to participation. We look forward to ideas. We are doing this not for one individual …  We are doing this for the city, and that means everyone.”

Trevor Brooks, a Jackson School of Geosciences Ph. D. candidate and CoLab researcher, said the initiative is developing research projects to inform the city on its climate-related needs and policies while also helping the University.

“We’re working together towards the same goal, and we’re both mutually benefiting,” Brooks said. “We get research projects, (and the city) gets informed data to help their decision making.”