The Center for Urban Policy Research’s Environmental Analysis and Communications Group, in partnership with the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center and the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center’s Placemaking, Outreach and Engagement Team, have collaborated with eight New Jersey municipalities to develop Climate Change-Related Hazard Vulnerability Assessments, or CCRHVAs. As of 2021, the NJ Municipal Land Use Law (MLUL) requires municipalities to include a CCRHVA in the land use plan element of their Master Plans to incorporate the current and future climate change risks into municipal planning efforts.
Supported by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Resilient NJ Municipal Assistance Program, the Rutgers team worked with Butler Borough (Morris County), Little Egg Harbor Township (Ocean County), Maurice River Township (Cumberland County), Town of Newton (Sussex County), Pennsville Township (Salem County), Rutherford Borough (Bergen County), City of Summit (Union County), and Wildwood Crest Borough (Cape May County) over approximately 18 months to develop CCRHVAs in alignment with the NJ MLUL. CCRHVAs are required to identify and analyze local climate hazards, vulnerability of local assets and populations, impacts to other existing local plans, and potential strategies to reduce risk.
Locally tailored data was gathered by Rutgers’ interdisciplinary team of researchers, GIS analysts, planners, community engagement specialists, and graduate students. Stakeholders contributed local experiences with climate hazards and impacts through an online survey and in-person public meeting in each municipality. This local knowledge complimented publicly available online datasets and new analyses developed by Rutgers, many available through the NJ Climate Change Resource Center’s NJ Adapt tools, to produce a robust hazard assessment. Describing the approach, Lucas Marxen, Executive Director of the Environmental Analysis and Communications Group and Co-Director of the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center stated, “Part of our team’s design was to develop a template for CCRHVA development based on localized data and analyses already available through the NJ Adapt platform to support municipalities and their planners in creating quality CCRHVAs. Additionally, our partnership with these municipalities and experience through this process provided us with direct stakeholder feedback on how our tools could be further enhanced to support these efforts.”
Each CCRHVA analyzes community exposure to heat, storms (extreme precipitation and wind), drought, flooding, and wildfire, as well as vulnerability of developable land, facilities and infrastructure, land uses, community assets, housing, and people. This hazard analysis was cross walked with each municipality’s Master Plan elements and other local plans such as Hazard Mitigation and Emergency Management to identify potential strategies to increase resilience. Bloustein graduate students assisted in all elements of the project, including identifying resilience strategies for three of the participating municipalities through a studio course in Spring 2025, as well as assisting with GIS analyses and community engagement. A Bloustein faculty advisory group was also convened to guide the work and identify opportunities to better integrate CCRHVA practice into the planning program curriculum. A second advisory group of professional planners with local planning expertise in NJ was convened to support knowledge sharing, helping inform Rutgers’ approach and how the lessons learned can provide best practices for the professional planning community.
The CCRHVAs are intended to help municipalities identify land use and zoning approaches to increase resilience to climate change impacts. Describing Pennsville Township’s experience with the CCRHVA project, Emergency Management Coordinator Steve Krough said, “Flooding has been a concern for the Township, and understanding the potential impacts of climate change is important as we plan for the future. This assessment will help us identify areas of concern, better understand risks to our residents and infrastructure, and look at ways to improve resilience. We appreciate Rutgers University and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for their assistance and support throughout this process.”
In addition to providing free technical assistance to the municipalities, the final reports and findings will help support statewide planning guidance and provide quality CCRHVA examples and documentation of effective practices. “Through the Resilient NJ program, the DEP is helping communities across the state better prepare for the impacts of storms and flooding,” said New Jersey Chief Resilience Officer Nick Angarone. “These vulnerability assessments are an important first step to helping local governments more effectively plan, prioritize and implement resilience projects in their communities. We are excited to be part of this effort.”
View the assessments here: https://njclimateresourcecenter.rutgers.edu/resources/climate-change-related-hazard-vulnerability-assessments/