Climate Ready Cities – Transforming Real Estate CREW Boston hosted a panel of climate change experts and thinkers on how they are helping improve the city of Boston’s waterfront. Ellen Watts of Architerra started by reflecting on the most important real estate in the world, the Earth’s atmosphere. She shared how we need to use historical data, ideas from other countries, and how we should be thinking differently moving forward. It’s about not retreating from our cities due to the ever changing climate and increase in storms but to reinvent our cities and to better protect our cities and the environment. Additionally we heard from our panelist; Kathy Abbott from Boston Harbor Now, Kirk Bosma from Woods Hole Group and Sam Sleiman from Massport. Kathy Abbott’s Boston Harbor Now mission is to focus on Boston’s waterfront issues, activation access and resiliency. The organization has helped create a Climate Action Plan for East Boston, Charlestown and South Boston and moving forward to the next neighborhoods. Another move they helped push was updating the BPDA guidelines to 40 inches for sea level rises for waterfront developments. The next frontier is improving the HarborWalk. Kirk Bosma from Woods Hole Group discussed how they were able to provide an accurate planning of risk and how they worked with the City and State to see how they can phase solutions, prioritize projects and design better. The biggest concern is not rising sea levels but coastal storm events. By using a combination of historical data and projection data, Woods Hole Group was able to find possible solutions and raise questions. One example was does it make sense to use water barriers. Sam Sleiman from Massport discussed how Massport started thinking differently about resiliency and started a plan in place after Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. Massport was one of the earliest adopters of hiring a resiliency program manager. As an organization, they defined the risks, how to assess the risk and how to come back efficiently from a storm. In the end, they created an operation plan and maritime design guidelines as well as an internal app to track all data, issues and solutions Massport faces during these storms. They are continuing their plans on how to be more sustainable. Thank you to all our speakers, the Boston Harbor Hotel and attendees for a wonderful event.