NSF Award
2418434
Climate change intensifies the frequency of extreme events, exacerbating the risk of hazards such as floods, leading to economic instability, social trauma, and harm to health. Recent research shows that such impacts fall disproportionately upon people and communities which are often excluded from climate adaptation planning, especially historically marginalized groups, people of color, and communities with low socioeconomic status. They also unequally affect regions where historical infrastructure disinvestment and development patterns have pushed residents into high-risk areas, driving increased exposure to natural hazards under future climate conditions. The current project addresses the disproportionate impacts of climate change and increasing flood risk in U.S. Gulf regions, where socially vulnerable and underserved communities inhabit areas with water quality problems, struggle with the capacity to mitigate flooding, and suffer from failing water and wastewater infrastructure. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between six institutions (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louisiana State University, Tulane University, University of Alabama, Tuskegee University, and Jackson State University). The project is implemented using a community co-production approach with stakeholders in three U.S. Gulf regions plagued by water hazards and disproportionate climate impacts: the Acadiana region in south-central Louisiana, the Mobile Bay region and surrounding counties in Alabama, and the City of Jackson and surrounding counties in Mississippi. The project aligns with the federal government’s emphasis on environmental justice and provides development opportunities for early-career researchers and students, with unique opportunities for two Minority-Serving Institutions to expand research infrastructure and workforce development.<br/><br/>This project presents an innovative development and application of integrated hydroclimatic modeling and socioeconomic analyses to reveal sources of misinformation contributing to the misallocation of resources and disproportionate outcomes in communities vulnerable to climate extremes. The convergent research plan and methods span multiple disciplines (history, hydrology, engineering, climatology, geography, economics, and sociology) and will advance the field of climate adaptation by revealing disconnects between historical conditions leading to disparities in vulnerability and infrastructure investment, current community experiences relating to exposure and impacts of water-related challenges (e.g., flooding, impaired surface water quality, deterioration of water supply and wastewater infrastructure), the stated intentions of plans and needs of planners, and the design of hydroclimatic predictive models and the types of information they typically produce. The project is designed around the following main objectives. Objective 1: Co-generate information on causes and history of social vulnerabilities, disproportionate impacts, and gaps in adaptation planning; Objective 2: Co-analyze and model past and future changes in climatic extremes; Objective 3: Co-analyze and model impacts on community hydrologic systems and water infrastructure; Objective 4: Co-develop planning scenarios to support climate adaptation while addressing the disproportionate impacts; and Objective (5): Enhance research infrastructure, to build community capacities, and support workforce development via new cross-discipline, multi-institution, and multi-jurisdiction collaboration. The co-production approach with community stakeholders will yield actionable knowledge in the form of data, models, and tools that resolve uncertainties in future climate extremes and that fully account for community needs and disproportionate impacts, thus enhancing the quality of information available for community-level decision-making. The project outcomes—including novel and integrated datasets, predictive models, maps, planning scenarios, and education and professional development modules—will increase the capacity of local officials and stakeholders to improve fiscal health and provide greater services for marginalized communities while accounting for changing climate. The project will lead to significant research enhancements in the form of new frameworks and tools for climate modeling and hydrologic forecasting that leverage and expand the U.S. national NextGen Water Resources Modeling Framework. Through collaboration and co-production, the project will improve how researchers and practitioners integrate community voices and knowledge into models to develop more equitable adaptation and resource allocation strategies. Project benefits can be extrapolated to communities with similar water and climate challenges. This project is funded by the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement-Focused EPSCoR Collaborations (RII-FEC) program. The RII-FEC program builds inter-jurisdictional collaborative teams of EPSCoR investigators in focus areas consistent with the NSF Strategic Plan. RII-FEC projects include researchers from at least two EPSCoR eligible jurisdictions with complementary expertise and resources necessary to address challenges, which neither party could address as well or as rapidly independently.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
