Project Summary: Local government leaders, planners, and others involved in hazard mitigation confront a daunting challenge regarding climate change as it changes their risk. To address these compounding vulnerabilities, communities need to be able to plan, design and implement resilience projects that address their local physical, social, and environmental needs. However, in many communities, the capacity to develop such projects, seek funding, and implement them is hindered by a lack of needed data, confusion over what data they should use, and a shortage of expertise to use the available data. Many communities need help — both in the form of time and technical support — to develop and access the data they need to develop robust projects to improve their resilience to natural hazards.
We will partner with communities to enhance proposals to agencies for innovative nature-based flood mitigation projects. To do this, we will combine socioeconomic data with hydrodynamic, morphologic, and ecological data to model how human and environmental systems respond to mitigation initiatives and adaptation strategies under various sea level rise scenarios. We will also compare predicted flood hazards and co-benefits, with and without nature-based flood hazard mitigation projects, and under potential adaptation measures. The specific project scenarios and designs evaluated will be determined through iterative conversations with stakeholders.
