The PROTECT program, established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), aims to enhance the resilience of surface transportation systems against natural hazards such as climate change, sea level rise, flooding, and extreme weather events. The program includes both formula and discretionary grants to improve the resilience of surface transportation systems.

The most recent PROTECT Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) announced details for two application periods. The first of which, for FY 2024 and 2025 funding, is open until February 24, 2025. The second period, for FY 2026 funding, is scheduled to be open from October 27, 2025 until February 24, 2026. The most up to date information on PROTECT funding opportunities can be found here.

The Local Infrastructure Hub’s case stories on PROTECT projects in Kalamazoo and Philadelphia demonstrate how funds were used for bridge rehabilitation and stormwater infrastructure upgrades.

For example, coastal communities may be at greater risk for storm surge and rising tides, whereas other communities may see risks relating to extreme heat. Furthermore, specific risks and how they present can vary widely even within one community; particularly in areas affected by historic urban planning decisions, including red-lining, and land use patterns. For example, reports from the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland found that lower income neighborhoods face greater flood-related risks and costs. To address these legacy challenges, project leaders need to understand the geography of risk in their community to garner a holistic understanding of the kinds of investments needed, and where.

An increasing number of cities, including Boston, have adopted climate action plans that identify specific climate risks and hazard mitigation measures, as well as innovative actions local leaders can take to reduce environmental burdens and support sustainable economic development. A city’s climate action plan can provide a great guide for resilient infrastructure investment and should be developed with significant community and stakeholder engagement; these planning documents can further enrich the inputs and variables that guide infrastructure investments. In addition to identifying the risks, many climate action plans also include discussions that tease out the economic and social impacts of inaction. The development of climate action plans also often incorporate extensive community and stakeholder engagement which can form the basis for continuing discussions on how to turn those plans into actionable projects.

In some communities, the risks of climate change are clear, but in many places risks are emergent and escalating due to the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and other natural hazards. These emergent risks need to be met with more and innovative adaptation and mitigation measures.

For example, West Memphis, Arkansas is separated from the City of Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee by the Mississippi River. There are five river crossings connecting the two communities, including two railroad crossings, a pedestrian/trail crossing, and two bridges carrying I-55 and I-40. Together, the two interstate highway bridges have a combined average annual daily traffic of over 100,000 vehicles, approximately a third of which is freight traffic. These bridges are highly vulnerable to shear stress and scouring during flooding, and repeated flooding continues to degrade the floodplain, exacerbating impacts over time; the economic impact of the closure of either bridge is immense as demonstrated by a construction-related closure of one of these bridges in 2021, which cost over $2.4M per day. To address these risks, several nonprofit partners and city officials collaborated to create a vision for a 1,500-acre publicly accessible nature preserve that will serve as a hub for the regional bicycle and pedestrian network – providing for enhanced recreational activities in the floodplain – while restoring the riparian forest that stood on the land before it was decimated by the logging industry in the 19th century.

For example, in Hoboken, resilience investments around multifunctional parks are reducing the flood risks, mitigating the effects of extreme weather events, providing economic benefits, and allowing government operations to continue uninterrupted. Additionally, their resilient infrastructure investments allow the city to work with FEMA to redefine the floodplain, which will alter local flood insurance requirements and decrease costs, fostering substantial savings for the city and local residents; yet, these savings are typically left out of consideration in discussions of resilience investments.

Furthermore, Hoboken recognized this project as an opportunity to go further than just investing in resilience; the city is expanding green space access and recreational amenities for their residents by leveraging BRIC funding to repurpose brownfield sites into public parks in the larger project area. Resiliency investments and holistic approaches, such as those in Hoboken, are clear at demonstrating how increasing your aperture can enable leaders to see the bigger picture and thus fully unlock the potential benefits of new investments.

A benefit-cost analysis can be a helpful tool in quantifying risks and benefits of resilience investments; the PROTECT grant program, like many others, requires this form of analysis in grant applications. FEMA provides a benefit-cost analysis model which can be used by project leaders and other stakeholders to evaluate options for resilience investments. The findings of such analyses can provide a framing for the project’s narrative, showing the cost of inaction and the savings from proactive investments in resilience.

Kalamazoo is making substantial investments in reconstructing their urban street network to make it safer for all road users and ensure that it aligns with the community’s modern land use patterns. The city is resuming a project started in the 1990s to upgrade their stormwater infrastructure; the stormwater upgrades largely overlap with the city’s road network, giving the city a “two-fer” with this investment protecting both roads and residents from increasingly frequent flooding events. Their PROTECT-funded work is a necessary investment in infrastructure and also supports broader economic development aims by strengthening their system-wide street network and supporting development work; PROTECT investments are stacked with RAISE and Reconnecting Communities Pilot awards as part of their broader city-wide work focused on converting one-way streets to safer, multi-modal streets that serve the community. Learn more about Kalamazoo’s downtown revitalization work in their Transformative Projects case story.

PROTECT is uniquely suited for multimodal investments given its express focus on surface transportation assets; PROTECT may be able to fund a surface transportation project on its own, or can be paired with other funding sources for broader investments. Local communities that are trying to maximize funding opportunities should identify ways to incorporate resilience components into their projects or identify existing project components that can be funded separately through these resilience-oriented funding opportunities. This can create avenues to pursue PROTECT-funding, and other resilience-oriented funding programs such as BRIC, to support stand-alone and interconnected projects.

In Kalamazoo, the city undertook a comprehensive planning effort in 2017, Imagine Kalamazoo 2025. Through that effort, they recognized the need for a redesigned street network that would enhance economic development opportunities and broader community connectivity. Furthermore, they saw the need to update and invest in stormwater infrastructure, both to protect their new investments and to ensure that the connectivity benefits would not be lost to flooding that blocks those connections. These noted concerns and opportunities to leverage a “dig-once” effort informed the city’s broader infrastructure strategy and efforts. This is discussed in greater detail in the Local Infrastructure Hub’s Transformative Project case story on Kalamazoo’s PROTECT-funded project.

Local project leaders should also consider how project goals, particularly those oriented around resilience, may align with those of other community stakeholders. For example, in Kalamazoo, local developers and city staff recognized the stormwater infrastructure’s impact on a new event center development. Given the aligned interests, they have been able to coordinate financing in such a way that the center’s developer will be funding the on-site stormwater infrastructure work which, per PROTECT’s NOFO, was eligible to fulfill the program’s local match requirements.

Similarly, Hoboken has invested in a network of Resiliency Parks parks. In 2013, following Hurricane Sandy the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) started the Rebuild By Design initiative, which takes a “multi-faceted approach to improve physical, ecological, economic, and social resiliency.” Locally, this is being executed through the Rebuild By Design Hudson River construction project, centered in Hoboken.

In Hoboken, the alignment of interests from local and state officials, as well as community members, in (a) repurposing a brownfield site, (b) addressing local flooding issues, and (c) creating more green space, enabled the formation of a strong coalition of stakeholders that are developing, financing, and executing on a portfolio of innovative park projects. These Resiliency Parks incorporate both park features, sought by community members, with stormwater infrastructure, aligned with the Rebuild By Design initiative.

In Philadelphia, for the city’s Northwest Bridge Sustainability project, city staff have developed deeper relationships with local neighborhood and community groups as flooding events have become more common. As a result, the interdepartmental project team has been able to tap into those relationships to better understand impacts and garner feedback on how to best navigate project development to meet community goals and needs.

In Davis, California the city is taking another approach to community engagement, working with and through community based organizations (CBOs). The city is investing in cool pavement technologies to address extreme heat and urban heat island effects. Per their grant application, they intend to contract with up to three CBOs to manage their community outreach and stakeholder engagement efforts. In innovative and transformative infrastructure projects, CBOs can be critical in helping to build trust and community support for the project, and they can facilitate information flows between constituents and local officials, helping keep the project on track and producing better outcomes for all.

The Local Infrastructure Hub has previously highlighted how another city, Tucson, and local CBO, Amistades Inc., are working together through an Environmental Justice and Collaborative Problem Solving grant, as part of EPA’s broader Community Change Grant program, to identify grassroots solutions to their own communities’ heat island challenges.

Many of the funding programs mentioned – namely BRIC, CWSRF, and PROTECT formula funding – require state coordination and engagement due to the role of state departments serving as intermediaries or even the lead applicant in the case of BRIC.

As is the case for the majority of federal grant programs, local matches can be critical to demonstrating community support and facilitating access to the full breadth of federal funding opportunities, and there are various ways to approach this. In Philadelphia, project leaders are planning to source the local match from the city’s capital budget; meanwhile, in Hoboken the match is being sourced through a mix of low-cost financing from New Jersey’s Infrastructure Bank, which administers the CWSRF for New Jersey, and Hoboken’s Open Space Trust Fund, which is funded by a local property tax. In West Memphis, demonstrative of the community support for their project, Big River Parks Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited committed to providing the local match of $4M.

The Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Washoe County provides a strong example of clear communication to the public, emphasizing safety and connectivity of the Lemmon Drive Traffic Improvements & Resiliency project through a concise yet comprehensive fact sheet. The project focuses on the realignment and reconstruction of a road currently along the perimeter of a floodplain. From the top, the fact sheet clarifies what the RAISE-funded project would, and would not do, and lays out a clear timeline both for the project, and public engagement. Their communications and narrative explain the challenges in the road’s current alignment, the benefits of realignment and reconstruction to improve safety and connectivity, and provide a roadmap on how the project will proceed.

West Memphis, Arkansas’s successful FY 2023 PROTECT project has also effectively communicated the devastating consequences of inaction through their grant narrative. Project leaders highlighted the 2021 closing of the Hernando de Soto Bridge along I-40 for emergency flood repair. According to Arkansas State DOT, the detours in place, for freight traffic, took an average of 10 times longer than the normal route over the bridge, costing the trucking industry $2.4M per day (source). Discussing the 2021 closure enabled project leaders to demonstrate the impact to the region if either bridge were to be damaged beyond repair. To mitigate the risks, the city and local nonprofit partners are working together to restore the riparian forests and enhance recreational activities offered on the 1,500-acre site on the Mississippi River’s western bank.

Showing the direct economic consequences of flooding with real dollars and cents helps make a strong case for the need for mitigation work. Taking this a step further, the grant narrative includes the benefit-cost analysis conducted with FEMA’s benefit-cost analysis tool, which found a benefit-cost ratio of 4.60:1, indicating $4.60 in benefits for every $1 invested. This ratio provides a clear and concise way to communicate the high return on investment in ecosystem services and resiliency. The narrative also includes how PROTECT funding would be leveraged by local matching funds sourced from philanthropy.

By engaging the community and developing a compelling narrative around potential impact, Hoboken was able to devise a project that not only reduced flood risk but also created a community asset in the form of a public park. Designing the park for mitigation enabled the city to tremendously reduce risk and lower flood insurance costs for most property owners. By communicating along two tracks, the public could see the project for its dual purpose, meeting goals set both by federal regulations and the community.

“The costs for this project are in the millions, but the savings are in the billions” — Caleb Stratton, Chief Resilience Officer, City of Hoboken

Kalamazoo received PROTECT funding for stormwater upgrades in line with the city’s latest master plan, Imagine Kalamazoo 2025, which identifies 10 goals that establish a vision for a connected and sustainable city, making the case for stormwater upgrades to increase resiliency even more compelling. Arcadia Creek, where the upgrades are occurring, has experienced more frequent flooding, resulting in an additional barrier between historically redlined communities and the central business district. Aligning the project with a broader strategic vision while focusing on a frequent phenomenon experienced by city residents allowed project leaders to make a comprehensive case for the improvements that would result from the federal investment.