Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Planning

The Town of West Springfield is a certified Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Community.

The state-funded MVP program helps municipalities plan for climate change and develop initiatives to reduce the town’s vulnerability to climate-related hazards and build resilience in the community.

To become a certified MVP Community, Town officials obtained an MVP Planning Grant and worked with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) to:

  • Define climate related hazards
  • Understand how they may be impacted by climate change utilizing the latest science and data at http://www.resilientma.org/
  • Identify existing and future climate vulnerabilities and strengths
  • Identify opportunities to take action to reduce risk and build resilience

As part of the MVP planning process, the Town and PVPC conducted a day long MVP Workshop with local stakeholders. The objectives of the workshop were to:

  • Affirm community consensus of the local meaning of extreme weather and local natural and climate-related hazards;
  • Identify existing and future vulnerabilities and strengths;
  • Develop and prioritize actions for the Town and broaden stakeholder network;
  • Identify opportunities for the community to advance actions to reduce risk and increase resilience

The results of the workshop were reviewed and synthesized, and the public was invited to a listening session (held via Zoom due to COVID-19 restrictions on gathering) to collect feedback on priority action recommendations. A recording of the listening session is below.

The final result of the MVP planning process is the Summary of Findings Report, which you can read here(PDF, 5MB).

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