In partnership with the City of Tampa, the Tampa Bay RPC was awarded grant funding from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Resilient Florida Program in 2023 to complete the Tampa Bay Regional Inundation Coordination (TBRIC) project. TBRIC addresses the needs of members of the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition who are in the process of conducting Resilient Florida funded vulnerability assessments, by providing flood scenario data, tools and best practices that comply with Florida Statutes. Specifically the project funded the creation of GIS datasets to assist local governments in conducting vulnerability assessments and to develop a geoprocessing mapping tool to enable users to map flood hazard vulnerabilities as new guidance and data becomes available. The project also defines best practices, and methodologies to increase consistency among local governments in the Tampa Bay Region.



The Resiliency Coalition is comprised of a seven-county area, which includes Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee and Sarasota. Project stakeholders included planners, emergency management, GIS, storm water, resilience, and transportation staff, and floodplain and natural resource managers along with regional climate and hydrology experts at universities, agencies and in private sector firms. The TBRIC story map highlights best practices for using the GIS datasets, as well as guidance on using the geoprocessing flood tools for conducting vulnerability assessments.

Emerald Coast RC was recently invited to present on its Rural Regional Transportation Plan (RRTP) at the Alabama Transportation Planner’s Association Annual Conference in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The RRTP is a pilot project funded by the Florida Department of Transportation that brings together technical and elected members from across the rural portion of the Northwest Florida region. Alabama has had Rural Planning Organizations, or “RPOs” for years, but were interested in learning how Emerald Coast is approaching and addressing rural transportation needs in northwest Florida regions.  

To date, the focus of the RRTP has been the development of a list of priorities accumulated from rural communities hoping to have a stronger voice with FDOT with a goal of achieving additional project funding. While continuing to engage small towns and cities, Emerald Coast RC established a framework that includes evaluation criteria and an interactive map showing the desired improvements. Emerald Coast RC is committed to maintain the framework so that projects can be considered during the annual Project Priority cycle. The RRTP interactive map can be found at: http://www.ecrc.org/RRTPMAP. 

The North Central Florida RPC provides staff support services to the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization (MTPO) for the Gainesville Urbanized Area which is an interlocal agreement organization among the City of Gainesville, Alachua County and the Florida Department of Transportation. As part of the services provided, the North Central Florida RPC staff annually prepares the Gainesville Metropolitan Area Multimodal Level of Service Report. The Service Report provides level of service analysis for automotive/highway, bicycle, pedestrian, and transit modes of travel in the Gainesville Metropolitan Area. Council staff compiled and analyzed Department, City, and County traffic count data in preparing the Service Report. The bicycle, pedestrian and transit levels of service estimates of all functionally classified collector and arterial roadways within the Gainesville Metropolitan Area are provided in the report.

The Service Report enables the North Central Florida RPC, in partnership with the MTPO, to identify unmet transportation system needs and develop priority projects to enhance the operational efficiency of the transportation system for the Gainesville Metropolitan Area.