RESILIENT Cedar key
Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan
Reimagining Cedar Key’s future through vulnerability assessment, community engagement, and adaptation planning for long-term coastal resiliency, including a new civic center, adaptive housing, and community-centered urban design.
Cedar Key is a historic coastal community located on Florida’s Gulf of Mexico coast. Despite its small population of fewer than 700 residents, the city remains an important regional hub with significant cultural, economic, and ecological value. Shaped by maritime trade, transportation, and the Florida Railroad, Cedar Key today supports thriving aquaculture, coastal tourism, and environmental research.
However, its low-lying coastal setting and close relationship with the surrounding environment also create increasing challenges from flooding and future climate impacts, emphasizing the need to better understand vulnerabilities and plan for long-term adaptation.
“Why Vulnerability Assessment?”
Flooding and Sea Level Rise
Florida’s Gulf Coast faces increasing climate risks from sea level rise, stronger storms, and coastal flooding. Due to its low-lying topography and direct exposure to the Gulf of Mexico, Cedar Key is particularly vulnerable to these impacts. Rising water levels, shoreline erosion, and aging infrastructure continue to create challenges for transportation networks, utilities, homes, businesses, and the aquaculture industry that supports the local economy.
Building a Resilience Roadmap
Recognizing these growing risks, the City of Cedar Key partnered with the University of Florida to develop a comprehensive Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan. The study evaluates future climate exposure, identifies vulnerable community assets and infrastructure, and provides data-driven strategies to guide long-term adaptation, strengthen resilience, and support sustainable decision-making.
The Project Funded by:
What is the Study About?
The Resilient Cedar Key project combines scientific assessment with long-term planning to help the community prepare for future climate challenges. Through a comprehensive Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan, the project identifies climate risks, evaluates impacts on critical assets, and develops practical strategies to enhance resilience across Cedar Key.
Vulnerability Assessment
Understanding Risks
Evaluates exposure and sensitivity to sea level rise, storm surge, rainfall, and flooding across Cedar Key’s critical assets.
Adaptation Plan
Building Resilience
Develops strategies to reduce vulnerabilities, protect critical assets, and guide long-term adaptation actions.
Vulnerability Assessment
Understanding where and how climate risks affect the community is the first step toward building resilience. The Vulnerability Assessment identifies Cedar Key’s most vulnerable assets and areas to inform future adaptation strategies.
Study Area
The Vulnerability Assessment evaluates Cedar Key through multiple study areas and critical community assets to better understand how future coastal hazards may affect the city. By combining exposure analysis, which identifies potential flood conditions, with sensitivity analysis, which evaluates how different assets may be affected, the assessment provides a clear picture of Cedar Key’s vulnerability.
To reflect Cedar Key’s complex geography and hydrologic connections, the city is organized into six study zones with distinct physical and community characteristics. The following maps show the assessment results by geographic zone and critical asset category, helping to identify where adaptation efforts are needed most.
Critical Asset Categories
Transportation
Transportation vulnerability is concentrated along key roadways and access routes throughout Cedar Key. Flooding may disrupt community connectivity, emergency response, and access to essential services, particularly along major corridors and airport access roads.
Click the map to enlarge.
Housing
Housing vulnerability is concentrated in low-lying residential areas and along the shoreline throughout Cedar Key. Homes in these locations face greater exposure to coastal flooding and sea level rise, increasing potential impacts on residents, property, and long-term community resilience.
Click the map to enlarge.
Critical Infrastucture
Critical infrastructure, including wastewater systems, water facilities, lift stations, and electrical infrastructure, faces increasing flood risks. Service disruptions to these essential systems could significantly impact community resilience during coastal hazard events.
Click the map to enlarge.
Community Emergency
Community and emergency facilities are concentrated in areas with increasing flood exposure, placing essential public services at greater risk during future coastal hazards. Reducing flood impacts on these facilities is critical to ensuring uninterrupted emergency response, public services, and community support.
Click the map to enlarge.
Natural & Cultural Resources
Natural and cultural resources face growing risks from coastal flooding, shoreline erosion, and environmental change. These impacts threaten parks, historic districts, coastal habitats, recreational areas, and aquaculture resources essential to Cedar Key’s environmental, cultural, and economic resilience.
Click the map to enlarge.
Local Economy
Local economic assets, including aquaculture facilities, businesses, and tourism areas, face increasing risks from coastal flooding and storm events. These impacts threaten Cedar Key’s working waterfront, local businesses, and tourism economy, underscoring the importance of protecting the industries that support the community’s livelihood.
Click the map to enlarge.
Compound Vulnerability
The Compound Vulnerability Assessment combines results from all critical asset categories to identify where multiple risks overlap across Cedar Key. The assessment highlights four priority areas that will guide future adaptation strategies and resilience investments.
Focus Area 1 – Downtown Cedar Key
Highest overall vulnerability across community assets, infrastructure, transportation, and businesses.
Focus Area 2 – Mid Cedar Key
Combined vulnerabilities in housing, infrastructure, natural resources, and transportation connectivity.
Focus Area 3 – West Cedar Key
Primary vulnerabilities in residential areas, natural resources, and transportation access.
Focus Area 4 – North Cedar Key
Vulnerabilities centered on transportation connectivity, housing, and the local economy.
Adaptation Plan
Understanding climate risks is only the first step toward building resilience. The Adaptation Plan transforms those findings into practical strategies and priority projects that reduce flood risks and strengthen Cedar Key’s long-term resilience.
Zone Adaptation Strategies
The prior vulnerability assessment’s exposure and sensitivity analysis helped to define specific needs that will shape the adaptation actions to mitigate flood risks, which will be detailed further in the document. The following section breaks down these requirements by each city zone and asset category.
Zone 1, Downtown
Connect and Redevelop
Click the map to enlarge.
Zone 2, Mid
Hydrologic Connectivity
Click the map to enlarge.
Zone 3, West
Land Conservation
Click the map to enlarge.
Zone 4, North
Local and Bypass
Click the map to enlarge.
Zone 5, South
Infrastructure & Shoreline
Click the map to enlarge.
Zone 6, Influence Area
Protect and Plug-in
Click the map to enlarge.
Spatial Framework for Adaptation Actions and Areas
The Spatial Framework provides a comprehensive vision for implementing adaptation strategies across Cedar Key. It identifies priority actions through three main strategies—infrastructure and redevelopment, waterflow neighborhoods, and green flood buffers—organized across four adaptation project areas to guide long-term resilience planning.
PROJECT 1: transportation Infrastructure
Elevating 3rd St. to protect downtown and ensure connectivity. Future sea level rise is expected to disrupt access throughout Cedar Key, particularly between State Road 24, the downtown waterfront, and surrounding neighborhoods. By 2040, portions of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Streets are projected to experience flooding during high tides and frequent storm events. This project proposes elevating 3rd Street between A and D Streets to maintain connectivity, reduce downtown flooding, and improve access to homes and businesses. The design also incorporates a stepped transition to a publicly accessible marsh that enhances storm surge protection while supporting mangrove restoration.
PROJECT 2: mOVING CITY HALL
Relocating Civic Infrastructure to High Ground. The vulnerability assessment suggests that many civic buildings are at risk in Cedar Key. This was demonstrated recently during the historic flooding of Hurricane Idalia. This proposal explores moving civic buildings, including City Hall and other essential services, permanently to the Community Center. It also investigates alternative designs for the site, including new buildings, potential mixed-use development with housing, and landscape improvements.
PROJECT 3: MID CEDAR KEY
Restoring Hydrologic Flow. Cedar Key is an archipelago. The island needs to allow water to flow through, not around it. This project focuses on restoring water flow through the island at three vulnerable locations. The image highlights a proposed new bridge from Indiana Avenue to Cemetery access that will restore hydrologic connectivity during extreme high tide events. This study establishes a replicable approach for other vulnerable areas across the island.
PROJECT 4: WEST CEDAR KEY
Granular Adaptation to Change. Much of Cedar Key is low-lying and low-density, making small-scale adaptation and nature-based solutions essential for reducing flood risks. This project promotes land conservation, home elevation, and expanded participation in the Community Rating System (CRS) program, while encouraging strategic land acquisition and post-disaster planning to limit future development in vulnerable areas.
Project Outcomes & Reports
Vulnerability Assessment Report
Adaptation Plan Report
Resilient Cedar Key Web App
Explore the Cedar Key Dashboard to interact with flood scenarios, visualize the impacts of compound flooding across multiple storm events and sea-level rise scenarios, and explore critical community assets through dynamic maps and interactive data visualization.