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Following significant community outreach and extensive analysis and modeling, the City of Miami Beach has adopted its Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan. The comprehensive study was funded by a $454,000 Resilient Florida Grant and supported by an additional $100,000 in matching city funds. The Plan is underpinned by the city’s Vulnerability Assessment, which identified 67,000 assets at risk to sea level rise within the 2070 time horizon, and employs compound flood modeling to propose strategies that build on the city’s broader resilience framework. 

The document is organized into phased pathways based on changing conditions and decision points. While the city has several existing policies, studies, and plans that detail flood protection strategies, the full implementation of these strategies may take decades, leaving many areas of the City at risk. To address gaps, the City’s Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan identifies additional and supplemental strategies to provide flood protection through the end of the century. The proposed strategies are organized by geographic area or asset type, and include key implementation details such as a strategy timeline and critical considerations for successful implementation. The Adaptation Plan also identifies additional metrics beyond sea level rise that can be used to help guide the initiation or phasing out of strategies based on observed levels of flood protection effectiveness. 

The city’s Plan takes an innovative approach in outlining “adaptation pathways,” which is becoming more common within the resilience planning space, and supporting future decision-making. The adaptation pathways provide a decision tree planning framework to guide transitions between strategies as conditions evolve. This flexible approach provides a structured, yet adaptable roadmap to inform major flood protection investments.