Strengthening the Resiliency of Our Nation on the Ground Act - Fall

Team Members: Katie McNamara, Jayson VanBeusichem, Kevin Fertig, Kang Guo, Yuan Liu, Saumya Mehrotra, Neerada Poduval, Hantian Rong, Neha Vaingankar

Extreme weather has become a nationwide and escalating risk with major economic and human costs. Over recent decades, the U.S. has experienced a high frequency of billion-dollar disasters—hurricanes and floods, tornadoes, droughts, extreme heat and cold—resulting in massive losses to property, business activity, and community wellbeing. Resilience is defined as the ability to prepare for, recover from, and adapt to these adverse events, yet federal resilience efforts have often remained fragmented across agencies and jurisdictions. Coordination gaps—between federal programs, between levels of government, and between decision-makers and the scientific community—create confusion for states and localities trying to access tools and funding, slowing implementation and weakening outcomes.

The STRONG Act establishes a national resilience strategy overseen by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President. Core components include a federal Gap and Overlap Analysis to identify existing resilience tools and funding, policies that unintentionally hinder resilience, and opportunities for stronger interagency collaboration. An Interagency Working Group and an external Advisory Group support OSTP, alongside a Coordinating Entity and designated Senior Resiliency Officers to align priorities across agencies. The program design also includes a public-facing information portal to improve accessibility of resilience resources and culminates in a National Extreme Weather Resilience Action Plan that sets goals, assigns responsibilities, and creates measurable evaluation criteria. By turning resilience into a coordinated federal operating framework—with clear roles, timelines, budgets, and performance metrics—the STRONG Act aims to reduce future losses while improving preparedness and long-term adaptive capacity.

Learn more about the MPA-ESP Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management.