The Regional Action Roadmap for Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke is a collaborative framework to help communities, businesses, and governments in Washington’s South-Central Puget Sound region build resilience to worsening climate hazards. The Roadmap is the outcome of the first year of C2ES’s Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator— a two-year program that activates public and private partners around shared hazards and high-impact resilience strategies—and serves as the foundation for coordinated implementation in year two. It synthesizes six key action areas—spanning community-led disaster preparedness, energy resilience, catalytic policy, business continuity, nature-based solutions, and built environment upgrades—that enable regional leaders to coordinate cross-sector strategies and advance a shared vision of a safer, healthier, more equitable future. The Roadmap was informed by insights from and codeveloped during the 2025 South-Central Puget Sound Accelerator convenings, which engaged more than 90 participants across 72 organizations spanning government, Tribes, nonprofits, academia, and the private sector.
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The South‑Central Puget Sound Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator is a two‑year initiative to strengthen regional resilience to extreme heat and wildfire smoke through cross‑sector collaboration. This Regional Action Roadmap reflects insights and codesigned strategies from the Accelerator’s first year (2025), which convened a cohort of leaders from government, Tribes, businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations across King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties in Washington state.
This Roadmap highlights shared priorities to advance the cohort’s vision of a resilient region: one that connects communities, provides equitable public health access, prioritizes nature-based solutions (NbS), and delivers clean and abundant air and water. These priorities are reflected in six key action areas, which, along with actionable strategies, were identified by participants through a series of convenings held in 2025.
The six key action areas to advance the South-Central Puget Sound’s resilience to extreme heat and wildfire smoke are:
These action areas are further built out into action plans, which provide clear, regionally coordinated next steps to implement high-priority strategies, emphasizing collaboration across governments, community organizations, businesses, and other partners. In the Accelerator’s second year (2026), C2ES and the cohort will select one or more action plans to refine and begin implementing together.
Drawing on insights from more than 90 participants across 72 organizations, this Roadmap is designed to spark collaboration and innovation, empowering the South‑Central Puget Sound region to lead on building a safer, healthier, and more resilient future. It serves as a shared framework for regional action that is coordinated, high-impact, and multi-sectoral, intended to complement existing efforts and inspire locally driven solutions. It offers a flexible menu of strategies to inform decision-making, rather than a complete or final authoritative solution.
Washington state is one of many in the United States that is already contending with worsening climate impacts: from intensifying heat and wildfires to drought, flooding, and severe storms.The physical impacts of these hazards affect local economic systems, community safety, and public health, often disproportionately impacting communities who experience historical and ongoing marginalization and disinvestment.
Local leaders and community members—bolstered by the Pacific Northwest’s strong culture of collaboration, clean energy leadership, and community-driven problem solving—are actively planning for and responding to climate hazards. The region is focused on developing solutions that reflect both community and business priorities. By building on Washington’s talents and advantages and recognizing common challenges across neighboring communities, a regional, multi‑sector approach can support resilience and coalition-building for a stronger, more equitable future.
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) launched the Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator in 2023 to advance regional action by coordinating local leaders through two years of flexible support and targeted, hazard-specific, and action-oriented convenings. The program was piloted with communities in Colorado’s North Front Range in 2023 to identify community-led resilience solutions for extreme heat and wildfires.
In 2025, C2ES brought the Accelerator to Washington’s South-Central Puget Sound region, where local governments and communities identified an opportunity to align perspectives around a regional conversation on extreme heat and wildfire smoke resilience. The region is actively preparing for disasters and building resilience, but it faces increasing risks to public health from these two hazards, at a time when federal funding and technical support for implementing solutions is uncertain. Despite these challenges, resilience practitioners can design multi-benefit solutions that extend the value of a single investment—supporting climate resilience, emissions reductions, public health and safety, local jobs, economic growth, and stronger preparedness—helping communities and businesses thrive on many levels and multiply investment impacts.
In Washington, the Accelerator aims to support the region’s existing commitment to an equitable and just future by providing leaders from government, Tribes, communities, and businesses with additional capacity to collaborate. This Roadmap captures collaborative discussions from the Accelerator convenings held in 2025, inspired by extensive engagement with local leaders and their existing initiatives across the region. It outlines the engagement process, current and projected heat and wildfire smoke impacts, the shared regional vision for a safe and prosperous future, key action areas for resilience, and opportunities and resources to accelerate action. The action plans outlined in this Roadmap were brainstormed by participants at a forum in September and then refined during a review period in late 2025 and through subsequent conversations with participants.
Using the action-oriented Roadmap as a guide, the Accelerator will transition from collective learning to coordinated implementation, accelerating progress toward a common vision and defined outcomes for heat and smoke resilience across the five-county region. In 2026, the Roadmap will help participants select one or more action plans to refine and begin implementing together.
C2ES launched the South-Central Puget Sound Accelerator in spring of 2025, following expressed interest from government, nonprofit, academic, business, and Tribal leaders in the region. In preparation for the Accelerator’s first year of convenings, C2ES reviewed local demographic data, climate hazard projections, economic sectors, and existing adaptation and resilience efforts. The C2ES team then kicked off the first year of the Accelerator by mapping local actors to identify organizations that are either engaged in climate and economic resilience or that represent communities and businesses experiencing climate impacts (see Figure 1 for a general timeline of the Accelerator’s two-year process).
General timeline of the Accelerator’s two- year process for coordinating and activating local resilience, economic development, and community leaders.
Between May and July 2025, C2ES conducted scoping calls with over 100 local leaders, which informed the South-Central Puget Sound Accelerator’s focus on extreme heat and wildfire smoke, and guided the design of the first year of convenings to build this Roadmap.
The Accelerator then convened two meetings of cross-sector leaders in the summer and fall of 2025. In this Roadmap, the meeting participants and their organizations are collectively referred to as the cohort (See Figure 2 for a breakdown of organization types; see Appendix A for a list of attending organizations). The Resilient Economies Roundtable—the Accelerator’s kick-off event—took place in July in Seattle. The Roundtable included discussion of the physical impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke, visions for a resilient future, practical paths to resilience, and opportunities for accelerating collaborative action in ways that center equity.
Takeaways from the Roundtable:
The Accelerator later reconvened participants in Tacoma for a Resources Connector Forum in September to build on the Roundtable discussions. Attendees explored the resource landscape for resilience efforts and learned about examples of projects taking innovative approaches to resilience.
Attendees also collaboratively developed Action Plans for the six key action areas and reflected on goals, opportunities, and priorities for the Accelerator to drive impact in 2026.
Takeaways from the Forum:
Washington state faces growing threats of extreme heat and wildfire due to climate change.11 Designed under a historically mild climate and coastal breezes, the region’s infrastructure is not prepared for future conditions,12 such as temperatures consistently exceeding 80 degrees F, and recurring poor air quality events caused by wildfires in the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges and the western United States and Canada (see Figure 3).
Central Puget Sound through impacts on air quality and subsequent effects to public health and business operations.
Increases in extreme heat and wildfire smoke paired with underprepared infrastructure can negatively affect public health, including heat- and smoke-related illness and mortality. The humidex, which combines temperature and humidity, is a strong predictor of heat-related illness. A daytime humidex above 90 degrees F and nighttime humidex above 65 degrees F correspond to higher risks of hospitalization and death. With the region expecting one to two additional weeks with maximum humidex above 90 degrees F, many more people face risk of heat-related illness and mortality, and the healthcare system may become especially strained.
Nighttime heat events are rising more rapidly than daytime highs, posing risks in areas with limited access to air conditioning because cooler nighttime temperatures are supposed to bring humans’ core temperatures back down after a hot day. Additionally, the fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in wildfire smoke poses serious threats to respiratory, cardiovascular, and cognitive health, as well as maternal and infant health during pregnancy, because PM2.5 particles penetrate deep into the lungs where it can enter into the bloodstream. Frontline communities and others, including low-income residents, older adults, children, outdoor workers, and people experiencing homelessness face the greatest exposure and health impacts.
These health impacts are compounded by economic consequences. Heat and smoke disrupt business operations, strain critical infrastructure, and reduce workforce productivity, posing significant challenges for Washington’s economy. One year of heat-related productivity losses in Washington can lead to $760 million in losses to industry sales, $376 million in lost gross state product, and 1,481 full-time equivalent jobs lost.
Because extreme heat and wildfire smoke impact public health, infrastructure, and economic systems, integrated resilience strategies can yield multiple benefits. Solutions such as green infrastructure, urban greening, and community resilience hubs not only mitigate heat and smoke exposure but also address related hazards such as drought and flooding, helping communities extend the benefits of resilience investments.
Resilience can be defined on various scales and through multiple perspectives. In other words, resilience can mean one thing for one group or region and mean something entirely different for another group. To ensure the cohort worked under the same understanding of resilience, the Accelerator helped communities and businesses in the South-Central Puget Sound craft a definition for the region by envisioning how a resilient future would look and feel. A shared vision—developed by a diverse group of participants—helps to inform the desired outcomes and priorities that would make up a resilient region.
For Accelerator participants in the South-Central Puget Sound, a resilient future connects communities to provides equitable public health access, prioritize nature-based solutions, and deliver clean and abundant air and water (see Figure 4).
The 2025 Accelerator convenings elevated topics that are top priorities for the region, grounded in the cohort’s vision for a resilient future. With the cohort’s input, C2ES summarized these topics into six key action areas, which capture strategies to build resilience to extreme heat and wildfire smoke (see Figure 5).
These key action areas served as the foundation for the September Forum, where participants explored resilience resources and developed action plans by identifying priority strategies, next steps, and enabling partnerships. In a follow-up virtual session, participants revised the priority strategies and action plans, which are summarized in Six Key Action Areas to Advance Heat and Smoke Resilience in the South-Central Puget Sound on page 18.
Several themes emerged consistently during Accelerator conversations across all six key action areas. Regional leaders emphasized the importance of integrating these five values regardless of the key action area or strategies being pursued.
Learn more about the importance of centering health and incorporating public health data into climate planning, including examples from the region (page 47).
Learn more about the Just Transition Framework and organizations leading this work in the South-Central Puget Sound (page47).
Learn more about existing efforts that prioritize equity and tools for designing more equitable processes and outcomes, developed by South-Central Puget Sound organizations (page 48).
Learn more about innovative financing mechanisms and resources specific to the South-Central Puget Sound (page 48).
Learn more about examples of projects that maximize cobenefits and the regional leaders spear-heading this work (page 48).
The following section presents practical opportunities for advancing the six key action areas identified through the 2025 Accelerator convenings. Each action area includes one to two high-priority strategies refined with participant input, paired with action plans outlining concrete steps, partners, and examples of existing efforts. While these action plans will guide the Accelerator’s next phase, they are also designed to work together—complementing and reinforcing one another to help communities, businesses, and governments build resilience.
In 2026, C2ES and regional partners will collaboratively select and implement one or more action plans, using participant-informed criteria to identify high-impact, feasible, cross-sector opportunities for year two. The remaining action plans will continue to serve as a flexible menu of options to guide future investments, partnerships, and locally driven initiatives beyond the Accelerator’s second year. Together, these opportunities form a scalable, adaptable roadmap that supports coordinated regional action while building on the strong momentum, expertise, and relationships across the South-Central Puget Sound.
Each of the six key action areas in this section follows a consistent structure, with the defining elements outlined below.
The Key Action Areas in this section are presented in alphabetical order and do not indicate ranking or priority.
Extreme heat and wildfires—which contribute to smoke events—are growing more frequent and severe in the Puget Sound. Community members are often the first and most trusted responders when disasters strike. However, many communities—particularly low-income, immigrant, rural, and Tribal communities—lack access to clear and language accessible emergency information, cooling and cleaner-air resources, and coordinated support networks. Empowering community-led disaster preparedness not only saves lives during emergencies, but also strengthens social connections, builds trust in response systems, alleviates strain on public emergency response services, and ensures that resilience strategies reflect the lived experience of those most at risk. By investing in the capabilities, leadership, and communication networks already present within communities—as well as identifying opportunities for cross-sector solutions not yet mobilized—the region can achieve more equitable, efficient, and culturally-responsive disaster response that reduces harm and accelerates recovery.
The following action plans outline steps to implement selected high-priority strategies and identify key partners and existing efforts to build on.
Communities and businesses increasingly rely on trusted local resource providers—both formal and informal—during disasters. This action plan aims to align and coordinate a regional, cross‑sector network that can be activated during heat and smoke events to provide disaster support, guidance, and information, while building local capacity across communities and businesses to respond to these hazard events.
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Delivering accurate, timely, and actionable information to residents and businesses is essential during disasters, such as extreme heat and smoke events. This action plan aims to design more effective and equitable disaster information and communications informed by the experiences and perspectives of local communities and businesses.
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The following example strategies—brainstormed by Roundtable attendees—could enable and further strength community-led response and activation to a range of disasters and emergencies, including heat and wildfire smoke events.
Reliable and affordable access to energy is essential for health, safety, and economic well-being; climate change is putting that access at risk. Increasing occurrences and severity of heat waves and wildfires could lead to more frequent and prolonged power outages and power shutoffs across the South-Central Puget Sound, particularly impacting communities with high energy cost burdens or limited access to alternative cooling and cleaner air. As extreme heat intensifies, greater reliance on air conditioning becomes a critical public health protection—but also significantly increases electricity demand, straining an already stressed grid. At the same time, deploying energy-intensive infrastructure, including data centers, further heightens grid instability and reliability challenges. When the power goes out, medically vulnerable residents may lose access to lifesaving equipment, essential community services shut down, and businesses face costly disruptions. Investing in energy resilience—through community-owned renewable systems, decentralized backup power, and modernized infrastructure—helps ensure residents can stay safe during extreme events while strengthening long-term energy independence and economic resilience.
The following action plans outline steps to implement selected high-priority strategies and identify key partners and existing efforts to build on.
Communities and businesses rely on trusted local spaces during disruptions. This action plan advances a regional network of clean energy-enabled community hubs that serve as reliable anchors during power outages and extreme heat or smoke events. The strategy aligns public, private, and community partners to invest in hubs that strengthen local energy resilience, reduce energy burdens, and provide power, cooling, clean air, information, and support during emergencies while building long‑term community capacity and trust.
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A resilient response to rising heat and wildfire smoke depends on a robust energy system—and on the skilled workforce needed to build, maintain, and modernize that system. This action plan expands regional job pathways to grow a skilled and inclusive clean‑energy workforce prepared to deliver technologies like solar, storage, heating and cooling system efficiency, strengthening the region’s long‑term energy security and resilience.
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The following example strategies—brainstormed by Roundtable attendees—could strengthen energy system resilience, enabling more reliable and affordable access to energy while ensuring that energy-dependent resilience solutions, like air conditioning, are accessible to frontline communities.
Climate-driven heat and wildfire smoke threaten human health and safety, including in the built environment. Without changes to policy, buildings will continue to trap heat, workers will remain exposed to hazardous air, and neighborhoods already experiencing health and infrastructure inequities will be disproportionally impacted during emergencies. Proactive resilience policy ensures that new development, public spaces, and infrastructure are built with climate safety in mind, while strengthening protections for workers and frontline communities. By aligning local and state rules with real community needs and lived experience, the South-Central Puget Sound region and Washington state can reduce risk, lower long-term public costs, and ensure community and business partners benefit from a safer, healthier, climate-ready future.
The following action plans outline steps to implement selected high-priority strategies and identify key partners and existing efforts to build on.
Integrating the lived experiences and priorities of communities and businesses into state policy ensures that heat and smoke resilience decisions are grounded in real‑world needs, public health impacts, and on‑the‑ground inequities. This action plan elevates community and business perspectives through coordinated engagement, shared data, and accessible advocacy tools to strengthen public health‑informed state policies and create lasting pathways for local voices to shape Washington’s heat and smoke resilience programming.
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The following example strategies—brainstormed by Roundtable attendees—highlight opportunities for state and local policymakers and planners to advance tools and resources that build resilience to heat and smoke at multiple scales.
Heat and wildfire smoke disrupt business operations and put workers at risk across the South-Central Puget Sound. Local partners and community organizations note that some workplaces and community-serving spaces struggle to maintain reliable cooling or high-quality air-filtration systems—an issue echoed in national studies showing that many indoor workplaces are not adequately prepared for extreme heat or smoke events, leaving employees and customers exposed during hazardous conditions. These climate hazards also carry significant economic consequences: statewide analyses estimate hundreds of millions of dollars in lost economic activity from heat alone, for example. By elevating businesses as active resilience partners—upgrading their facilities, protecting workers, and supporting community access to clean, safe spaces—regional strategies can boost economic stability while strengthening community well-being during future heat and smoke events.
The following action plans outline steps to implement selected high-priority strategies and identify key partners and existing efforts to build on.
HIGH-PRIORITY STRATEGY: Invest in community-based public-private partnerships (CBP3s) that help neighborhoods and businesses work together to prepare for extreme heat and wildfire smoke events.
CBP3s help neighborhoods and businesses jointly prepare for heat and smoke by mobilizing shared resources, strengthening local networks, and creating solutions that benefit both workers and residents. This action plan builds and supports these partnerships by engaging trusted business connectors, expanding access to preparedness information, and co‑designing pilot projects that enhance community safety, business continuity, and region‑wide resilience to extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
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Preparing businesses for heat and smoke disruptions requires continuity plans that protect workers, maintain operations, and strengthen local economic resilience. This action plan guides businesses in developing those plans by identifying sector‑specific needs, expanding access to continuity resources, and supporting hands‑on workshops and pilot projects that help companies test, refine, and operationalize strategies for staying resilient during extreme heat and wildfire smoke events.
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The following example strategies—brainstormed by Roundtable attendees—offer ways that the region’s businesses can build resilience to heat and smoke impacts, while contributing more broadly to community resilience outcomes.
Nature-based solutions can help the South-Central Puget Sound address rising heat and smoke risks while improving community health, reducing inequities, strengthening local economies, providing cobenefits, and protecting natural resources. NbS also provide an opportunity to integrate Indigenous-led solutions, support Indigenous stewardship practices, and center Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences as essential to climate resilience. NbS strategies such as climate-smart tree canopies, green roofs, green walls, and pocket forests offer improved smoke-event air quality and other environmental and social cobenefits, including community cohesion Integrated water-focused strategies like rain gardens, street trees, permeable surfaces, and building-scale reuse enhance resilience by capturing and filtering stormwater, recharging groundwater, and reducing flooding. With cross-jurisdictional coordination, aligned policies, workforce investment, and public-private partnerships, the region can scale NbS that deliver immediate cooling and clean-air benefits, support local businesses, and lower building cooling costs, all while strengthening long-term climate and water security.
The following action plans outline steps to implement selected high-priority strategies and identify key partners and existing efforts to build on.
Expanding climate‑smart tree canopy can significantly reduce urban heat and improve air quality, especially in frontline neighborhoods that face the greatest exposure during heat and smoke events. This action plan strengthens that outcome by coordinating a regional urban forestry strategy, advancing public‑private partnerships, and launching pilot projects and workforce training programs that increase tree cover, improve long‑term maintenance, and deliver cooling, health, and equity benefits.
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NbS can protect and restore the region’s water resources while simultaneously delivering cooling, cleaner air, and public‑health benefits that strengthen resilience to extreme heat and wildfire smoke. This action plan advances that vision by coordinating cross‑sector partners, piloting multi‑benefit green‑infrastructure projects, and embedding water‑resilience practices into planning, public campaigns, and code updates to ensure communities and businesses have a clean, reliable, climate‑ready water supply.
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The following example strategies—brainstormed by Roundtable attendees—could advance nature-based solutions that enhance resilience, protect health, and support communities in adapting to heat and smoke impacts:
Many commercial and residential buildings in the South-Central Puget Sound remain ill-equipped to protect people from the impacts of heat and wildfire smoke. The Seattle metro has historically had one of the lowest air conditioning rates in the country—only 44 percent of homes had air conditioning in 2019, growing to 63 percent by 2023. Many homes, multifamily buildings, schools, and community facilities still lack high-efficiency filtration needed to keep indoor air safe during smoke events. Retrofitting and designing buildings to stay cool, filter smoke, and ensure accessible safe indoor spaces will reduce health risks, reduce business continuity disruptions, prevent displacement, and build resilience for frontline communities.
The following action plans outline steps to implement selected high-priority strategies and identify key partners and existing efforts to build on.
Public health data is essential for shaping building codes and planning policies that keep people safe during extreme heat and smoke events, ensuring homes, workplaces, and community spaces provide healthy indoor environments. This action plan uses that data to guide regional standards, model codes, and educational campaigns—strengthening policies, incentivizing upgrades, and improving monitoring so that buildings across the South‑Central Puget Sound can better protect community health during future climate‑driven emergencies.
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Upgrading the region’s building stock is essential for protecting residents and workers from worsening heat and smoke, especially in homes and workplaces that currently lack adequate cooling or filtration. This action plan streamlines and scales these upgrades by developing regional guidance and incentives, simplifying contractor engagement, and expanding training pathways—making it easier and more affordable for building owners to implement heat‑ and smoke‑ready improvements.
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The following example strategies—brainstormed by Roundtable attendees—could improve the ability of the region’s built environment (i.e., buildings, transportation infrastructure, and water and energy systems) to withstand impacts from extreme heat and wildfire smoke, while protecting residents, workers, and visitors:
Organizations seeking to implement actions in this Roadmap will benefit from considering the range of public and private resources that are currently available. Aligned resources were considered in the process of developing this Roadmap, but the resource environment is shifting rapidly. This section outlines some of the key examples of available resources and considerations for innovative stacking of public and private funding.
Federal funding uncertainty110 and state budget constraints111 have heightened the need for local and state leaders across the South-Central Puget Sound region to find new ways to advance resilience efforts. Beyond traditional funding sources, communities can leverage non-financial resources such as data, tools, partnerships, and technical assistance to address the growing risks of extreme heat and wildfire smoke. Expanding public-private partnerships and drawing on philanthropic support, traditional bank financing, and emerging innovative financing models can unlock the diverse capital needed to accelerate and sustain resilience investments. While many resources already exist, increasing community awareness and access is critical to strengthening regional resilience.
There is growing momentum in the region around innovative financing mechanisms, community-led preparedness, and cross-sector partnerships that stretch limited resources and build on existing efforts. Examples of these opportunities include:
C2ES and the cohort have compiled example resources of regional or statewide initiatives and working groups, data and tools, technical assistance programs or providers, and grants or financial resources to help communities and companies build resilience to extreme heat and wildfire smoke. These example resources can be found in the tables in Appendix C. A more comprehensive—and growing—list of resources is available in the Living Resource Database, which emerged from the Resources Connector Forum in July 2025.
This Regional Action Roadmap serves as an ongoing resource for a range of public and private organizations in the South-Central Puget Sound region seeking to take high-impact action on heat and smoke resilience. Grounded in six cross-sector key action areas and accompanying action plans developed through the 2025 Accelerator convenings, the Roadmap provides practical, equity-centered steps that emphasize collaboration among local governments, community-based organizations, businesses, and other regional partners.
By anchoring the Roadmap in action, the Accelerator will transition from collective learning to coordinated implementation, accelerating progress toward a common vision and defined outcomes for heat and smoke resilience across the five-county South-Central Puget Sound region. This Roadmap will directly shape the Accelerator’s future activities by guiding participants in selecting one or more action plans to refine and begin implementing together.
Through an engagement process surrounding the Roadmap’s release in 2026, participants will identify priority action plans, clarify roles, and commit to leading, supporting, or engaging with specific actions. This approach is designed to move from planning to action—launching early wins, strengthening cross-sector partnerships, and advancing equitable resilience outcomes—while sharing leadership across the region.
With input from the cohort, C2ES will develop criteria for selecting one or more action plans for the Accelerator to implement in 2026 and 2027, prioritizing, for example, feasibility, impact, and ability to leverage interested cross-sector partners and available resources. C2ES will also invite participants and their networks to lead or support additional action plans, offering coordination assistance to empower further refinement of the action plans and implementation of the Roadmap.
