Charleston County committee adopts recommendations after review of multi-hazard vulnerability assessment

The Charleston County Resilience and Sustainability Advisory Committee heard a presentation on the county's multi-hazard vulnerability assessment and tools and voted to recommend staff explore a local resilience fund and to encourage formation of an interdepartmental working group to advance resilience strategies.

The assessment, completed in October 2024, uses parcel-level data and nine modeled flooding scenarios to show where flood exposure, adaptive capacity and critical infrastructure overlap. Tim (Fernleaf consultant) and Steven Jilka (Fernleaf) described an interactive mapping tool and a set of 11 strategies county staff identified for implementation.

The assessment matters because it moves the county from broad statements of risk to spatially specific priorities that can inform funding, grant applications and project sequencing. Molly (county staff) framed the committee's choices as a short list of near-term actions that would help the county take advantage of limited federal and state mitigation funding and develop local, sustained capacity.

Fernleaf's presenters said the assessment rests on three features:…