SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Human-centric, Data-driven Coastal Flood Resilience Strategies for Economically Disadvantaged Communities on Long Island

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) research has a focus of developing a community-centric, hybrid modeling approach for coastal flooding mitigation planning. Combining state-of-the-art, high-resolution flood modeling with community engagement, the development of optimal mitigation strategies that are informed by the needs of the community, as they define them, will be enabled. By expanding the scope of the factors considered in the modeling process, its realism will be improved, enhancing the planning capacity of, and the buy-in from, the local community. In close collaboration with a Long Island, New York coastal community and the Suffolk County planning department, community stakeholders will be engaged in collecting and generating data on key socio-economic characteristics and behavioral propensities of the community. Employing a suite of social scientific techniques, these data will be used to predict the social and behavioral responses to extreme flooding events and potential policy interventions. The predicted responses will be fed back into the model to enable a more holistic assessment of the mitigation strategies. The project will provide residents, policymakers, and other stakeholders with powerful new tools to both better assess the impact of future extreme events and determine the optimal adaptation and mitigation strategies. This inclusive modeling approach can be applied to other communities, tailoring optimal engineering solutions to their needs and as a result, enhancing the equity and effectiveness of engineering solutions and municipal planning for flood mitigation and adaptation. The novelty of this project is its community-centric simulation-based approach for assessing risks to infrastructure, properties, and local businesses on coastal flood plains due to extreme weather events. Specifically, this project will develop a physics-informed community-scale high-fidelity computer model for quantitative assessment of these risks and will implement mitigation strategies informed by the model that have been co-produced with the local community, considering the implications for local businesses. In addition to traditional inundation-depth information, the project will enhance the current flood prediction capabilities by including other flood-related factors such as erosion and damage to infrastructure. The robust process of engaging with the local community and decision makers, used to refine and parameterize the model to better address the needs of the community and consider their behavioral responses, will help further the goals of environmental justice and socioeconomic equity. Such an approach is unique and innovative. It has the potential to save substantial costs while improving the quality of life for the ~40 percent of the nation’s total population who live in coastal counties. This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track A. Living in a changing climate: pre-disaster action around adaptation, resilience, and mitigation—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy. 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.