A western mountain landscape with two rows of houses and other buildings and a large american flag blowing in the wind

A rural landscape in the western U.S. Across the country, rural communities have the potential to miss out on investments in climate resilience and hazard mitigation. Source: Iampaese /Shutterstock.com

By Joseph Karanja and Tiffany Cousins

Communities across the United States will require significant investments to prepare for and adapt to floods, wildfires, extreme heat, and other climate change-driven hazards. At the federal level, decision makers have historically used climate vulnerability maps to identify the places that will benefit most from federal funds and technical assistance for climate resilience. Yet these maps overlook some of the most constrained and high-need communities.

We set out to examine two of the predominant federal tools introduced in recent years: the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool and the Community Disaster Resilience Zones. Our analysis reveals that these maps and metrics fail to adequately capture low-capacity communities. That means places with limited data, resources, staffing, and expertise have the potential to be left behind. Additional cuts to these programs only further amplify these existing problems.

To break cycles of underinvestment and realize climate resilience goals, there’s an urgent need to strengthen available resources through integrating community capacity as a key facet of federal vulnerability designations.

Competition and Community Capacity

Federal grants and programs have long supported the planning, funding, construction, and maintenance of hazard mitigation and disaster risk reduction projects across the United States. In the face of increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather disasters, many communities rely on this support.

Yet securing funds is a demanding process. It often requires a time-intensive planning and application process, project reporting requirements, matching funds, or long-term project maintenance. For low-capacity communities—meaning those with limited resources to plan, fund, implement, and maintain major climate adaptation projects—this can present substantial hurdles. Indeed, with many communities vying for the same limited capital, rural, low-income, underserved, or otherwise capacity-limited local governments face a disadvantage in the competition for funds.

Federal Vulnerability Maps and Considerations of Capacity

Vulnerability maps like the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Disaster Resilience Zones (CDRZ) were created to guide the distribution of billions of federal dollars and technical assistance for housing, energy, infrastructure, and other projects that can strengthen climate resilience and mitigate disaster impacts. They assess vulnerability based on a combination of social, economic, environmental, and infrastructure conditions that shape how communities experience risk.

CEJST was the product of a 2021 Executive Order requiring the Council on Environmental Quality to publish maps that identify disadvantaged communities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency developed the CDRZ in response to legislation passed by Congress in 2022 requiring publicly available products that show the risk of natural hazards throughout the nation, with ratings for factors such as social vulnerability and community resilience. Both tools were taken offline in 2025.

Prior to their removal, we partnered with Headwaters Economics to investigate the places or populations that these maps may be missing. We compared the geographies captured in the federal maps against those in the Rural Capacity Index (RCI). This index summarizes data on government staffing and expertise, institutional capacity, economic opportunity, and education and civic engagement in a given community. We analyzed the extent to which federal vulnerability maps incorporate these local capacity considerations in their design and implementation.

Overwhelmingly, we found a mismatch between Census tracts in federal vulnerability maps and those designated as low-capacity in the Rural Capacity Index. According to our analysis, a high-capacity community is 14 times more likely to be identified for federal support by the CDRZs tool.

Findings were similar for our analysis of CEJEST maps. According to our research, a high-capacity community is seven times more likely to be identified for federal support using this tool than a low-capacity community. This held true across different units of analysis, from census-designated communities to counties. In other words, regardless of the level of geographical aggregation, rural, low-capacity places are underrepresented in federal vulnerability designations.

This map shows where capacity ranking (HC - high capacity; LC - low capacity) intersects with one or both of the CDRZ and CEJST maps.

This map shows where capacity ranking (HC - high capacity; LC - low capacity) intersects with one or both of the CDRZ and CEJST maps. Source: Headwater Economics and the William Averette Anderson Fund.

Regionally, communities in the Midwest and Intermountain West typically have the lowest capacity. However, these two regions are also least represented in federal vulnerability maps. This finding illuminates the potential for persistent inequity in the distribution of federal grants. Consider, for example, that 80% of the total funds distributed through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program for the financial year 2021 were allocated to projects in coastal states.

The Way Forward

These federal vulnerability maps are ultimately intended to advance climate resilience in the face of more frequent and intense disasters. Local governments play a critical role in preparing for these threats, yet their capacity is largely overlooked. While both the CEJEST and CDRZs represent important progress in calling attention to at-risk and in-need communities, they are incomplete without the integration of local capacity data. Incorporating local capacity data can reduce barriers by identifying places where waiving local match requirements or providing more technical assistance can reduce barriers to secure funding.

Although these vulnerability maps have recently been deemphasized by the federal government, this work is still relevant in addressing how these or other tools can be enhanced through future federal, state, or locally-led initiatives. For example, the state of California has its own equivalent of the CEJST tool which could be styrengthened by what we found. Additionally, non-profits and donor agencies keen on building climate resilience could target their investments to ensure that these data are fully integrated. By exposing data blind spots that influence how mitigation and adaptation funds are allocated, we can offer a more holistic lens for future investments.

While policies and tools change over time, the need for rigorous, data-driven, equity-focused initiatives remains constant. There is an urgent need to redesign federal programs to center not only vulnerability, but the lived realities of communities with limited capacity. Embedding capacity metrics can unlock more equitable resilience investments, ensuring that even small or under resourced local governments can plan, secure funding, build, and sustain projects that reduce disaster risks and help communities to thrive.