During extreme weather, people often need a safe place to go, so some communities are planning to create resilience centers.
“Resilience centers will be places where community members can go to have air conditioning during heat waves, to have access to air filtration during wildfires,” says Yanelli Núñez of the nonprofit PSE Healthy Energy.
The group recently partnered on an effort to identify possible places in California for resilience centers.
They created a free online map of schools, places of worship, and community centers. It shows the size and solar capacity of each.
Then they overlaid that map with data on climate risks and poverty levels, so users can see where resilience centers are most likely to be needed.
Núñez says the map can reveal promising locations. But choosing one requires more consideration.
“It’s not just about identifying a building that has the characteristics that we’re looking for, but also a building where people can form a sense of community … that is welcoming to people from different backgrounds,” Núñez says.
So she says it’s important to get input from community members to make sure a selected location is a place they’ll feel comfortable going for help.
Reporting credit: ChavoBart Digital Media
