How Can We Protect People and Communities from the Worst Effects of Climate Change?

For much of the past two decades, people all over the world have been profoundly impacted by climate change. Sea-level rise has displaced large populations of coastal communities. Regions that historically did not experience extreme temperature are now seeing drastic swings between hot and cold. Wildfires have grown more intense, with the very idea of ‘wildfire season’ expanding to seemingly all months of the year.  

“Most governments at all levels agree that the climate is changing, and that these changes are leading to unwanted impacts on society,” says Marshall Burke, professor of Global Environmental Policy at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability.

As climate disasters ravage communities, there’s an “urgent” need to rebuild, says Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science at the Doerr School, especially in “a way that makes us more resilient and robust to future events.”

Might these climate disasters do less damage if countries, states, and counties were able to help citizens better prepare for, handle, and rebuild from them?

To develop policies that effectively protect people, jurisdictions need to understand which interventions reduce climate risks and help communities prepare or rebuild. “There’s a specific lack of synthesis around what actually works,” Burke notes. Similarly, Wong-Parodi is motivated to study past disasters and build an understanding of how people can best re-build structures in ways that promote climate resilience.

The Stanford Impact Labs Design Fellowship has given Burke and Wong-Parodi an opportunity to separately address some of these research gaps.  Ultimately, their research can equip governments, institutions, and communities to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate.

Designing effective climate policies with data

During his Design Fellowship, Burke and his team synthesized data from all over the world to understand policy impacts and how they interact with people affected by climate change. They ultimately launched the Environmental Hazards Adaptation Atlas, a publicly available online tool that integrates data on climate exposures, their impacts, and potential interventions. They studied programs or efforts that reduced the impact of extreme temperature, such as better forecasting, community interventions, and urban design. “We wanted to put together the information on what works, but in a way that was useful to the policy community,” he says.

The Atlas has already been used by California counties, which are mandated by law to develop heat action plans and to apply to federal and state funding to build climate resilience.

“We have to work with the data that the world gives us—or that policy makers have generated—and use that to understand policy impacts,” Burke says. “Our goal is both to do those studies and then to synthesize the broader set of literature. The challenge is casting the net widely enough to evaluate policies you’d expect might work, while also trying to catch the stuff you wouldn’t expect.”

Through his work, Burke has found that wildfire smoke, for instance, is the “the most rapidly changing environmental threat” in the United States. New research, including work from his team, suggests that wildfire smoke affects a broader population than previously understood, including pregnant people.

While some interventions have proven effective in limiting the impacts of climate extremes, such as improved weather forecasting and refund policies that make home heating and cooling more affordable for low-income populations, the impact of others is unclear. “Many things that governments do have no strong evidence behind them,” Burke says. 

Prescribed burns to reduce wildfire smoke, for example, would yield benefits within three to five years by reducing fuel loads in forests. Other interventions, such as cooling centers, are far less understood. Cities often establish these locations during extreme heat events to provide relief for people who don’t have air conditioning. “We have no idea whether they’re doing anything,” Burke says. “That doesn’t mean they’re not working, but we don’t even know if people are showing up.” By partnering with the entities responsible for tracking data from existing cooling centers, Burke and his team could help fill in this gap. Evaluating the efficacy of the approach would equip other cities and counties with the evidence they need to make informed choices about creating cooling centers of their own.

Rebuilding after climate disasters

Climate disasters affect not only public health, but also property and economic stability. According to CoreLogic, a property analytics firm, one in ten homes—more than 14.5 million individuals—in America were impacted by hurricanes, winter storms, wildfires, and other disasters in 2021, resulting in nearly $60 billion in damages.  

“We have every kind of natural disaster happening all at once,” Wong-Parodi says. “The urgency to rebuild in ways that make communities more resilient and robust is increasing.”

Wong-Parodi has focused her Design Fellowship on post-disaster rebuilding. Specifically, her research examines how communities can rebuild after climate-driven disasters in ways that promote equity, and address energy poverty. “Rebuilding locks in climate resilience for the future,” she says.

“We know from past work that giving people information isn’t enough, and we also know rebuilding is a very traumatic and drawn-out experience for people,” she says. Survivors often face decision fatigue, financial strain, and logistical challenges, while aid organizations try and distribute one-time informational materials in the immediate aftermath of an event. Those able to rebuild must navigate complex systems—securing permits, finding contractors and accessing building materials. At some moments, survivors may not be receptive to receiving guidance on rebuilding.  “What is actually needed is a process where information is trauma-informed and provided at the right time, over the course of years that it takes to recover,” she says.

As a psychologist, Wong-Parodi is attuned to what drives people to act, which means she and her colleagues are figuring out the most sensitive way of helping individuals and communities rebuild. By looking at past disasters—Hurricanes Harvey and Helene and the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires—and how communities rebuilt, she is keen to learn what has worked, and how new construction in the aftermath has helped improve the well-being of a community in the long-term.

Wong-Parodi and her colleagues are partnering with the American Red Cross, rebuilders, advocacy organizations, and others to design and test interventions that support climate-resilient rebuilding. She recently hosted a two-day workshop at Stanford, bringing together more than 25 stakeholders to identify a research-based intervention to deploy in a community that will be altered by a climate disaster in the next two years.

The resulting concept: a “recovery concierge” service—an AI-assisted tool designed in-house combined with human case management—to guide individuals through the rebuilding process. The goal is to provide survivors of climate disasters with the support they need, as they need it, through “a combination of technology-assisted information and leveraging social relationships and norms,” Wong-Parodi says.

She emphasizes that rebuilding as a community is tantamount; individual resilience is not enough. In the event of a wildfire, for instance, “You really need your neighbor to do something because if they don’t, you’re at risk. It’s a collective problem.”

Still, it can be challenging to convince property owners to implement climate-resilient building. For instance, California’s “Zone Zero” regulations require houses built in high-risk fire zones to be devoid of flammable materials, like plants, within a five feet radius.  

”People want their garden, and they want the garden to be lush, says Wong-Parodi. “They want their house to be beautiful. Aesthetics is a huge issue. When we’re thinking about climate resilient materials, they should be beautiful. A climate-ready house should still feel like home.”