NSF-NFRF: A Collaboratively Designed and Managed Flood Resilience Framework for Affected Communities in the Caribbean Region

University Of Louisiana At Lafayette, Lafayette LA

Investigators

Abstract

This award aims to achieve flood resilience and reduce the impacts of flooding on coastal communities in the Caribbean region, particularly in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and St. Lucia. The project outcomes will benefit coastal and riverine communities in the Caribbean region by addressing flood risks while fostering community education and building partnerships between researchers, decision-makers, community organizations, and citizens. The project will deliver decision-support tools that reduce the social, economic, and environmental damage caused by climate change. The project will generate new insights into government policies, institutional frameworks, land use and zoning regulations, and social networks required for resilience. Engineers, natural scientists, climate scientists and modelers, ecologists, social scientists, and land-use planners, working iteratively with flood-prone communities, will pool their expertise in an integrated manner to address the human, physical, and social devastation and increasing financial damages of flooding. The project team includes several early-career researchers and will provide training opportunities to diverse populations from the local communities and graduate education training to several students, with a dedicated effort to recruit students from the Caribbean region. The project has the following main goals: (a) To develop a community learning platform that provides a comprehensive understanding of how vulnerable communities are affected by floods and (b) To empower decision-making using integrated social, economic, and environmental data supported by open-source modeling tools. The project will engage the affected communities in the potential solutions throughout the project phases. The project includes six work packages with tasks that focus on: (1) Community learning and creation of flood mitigation measures, (2) Development of data systems for decision-making, (3) Flood prediction models, (4) Inclusive and adaptive flood risk governance, (5) Capacity development, and (6) Building flood resilience in communities both nationally and regionally. The project will incorporate green systems such as mangroves, wetlands, and native vegetation species into flood control infrastructure. New digital tools incorporating remotely sensed data, satellite imagery, climate forecasting, and prediction models will lead to improved designs of flood control structures, siting of infrastructure, and an early flood warning system to be used by the community, government agencies, and flood relief organizations. This award is part of a multilateral project supported jointly by the National Science Foundation and funding agencies in Canada and the United Kingdom under the International Joint Initiative for Research on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Competition, led by Canada. Each agency supports scientists at institutions in its country. 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.