Extreme storms have major impacts on communities in their path. Although many climate models predict increased frequency of heavy rains and icing events, freak storms and severe weather as a result of ongoing climate changes, the risk factors for many locales are no longer accurately predicted by historical trend analyses. In addition, variables such as time of year, tidal conditions and temperature can enhance the severity of a storm's impact.

The ability for individual communities to respond to major storms, and to exhibit long-term resilience to extreme events, depends on their capabilities in risk assessment, management and preparedness. But, the rapid pace of changes within the global climate system means that old paradigms about risk may no longer apply. New risk models must take into account complex and incompletely identified earth system feedbacks. Because of this gap in predictive capability, community resilience increasingly depends on adaptation to uncertain levels of risk and on individual awareness of risks and adaptation systems and strategies.

As part of NSF's InTeGrate Program, an interdiscplinary team comprised of a geologist, an emergency manager and a socialogist, developed an educational module to prepare individuals for storm risk uncertainty. Our overall aim is to create a citizenry informed of potential risks, effective mitigation and response strategies to major storm events and to reduce individual and community demand for emergency measures. The academic module focuses on enhancing social resilience through cross-disciplinary, systems training activities. The module, adaptable for use in any region, has been pilot tested and evaluated and is expected to be available through Creative Commons license in AY 2017.

This presentation covers the various components of the module, outcomes of pilot testing and summaries of elements that proved most challenging for participants (and faculty) in different disciplines.