Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mapping Community Exposure to Coastal Climate Hazards in the Arctic: A Case Study in Alaska's North Slope

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This research investigates community exposure to coastal climate hazards in Alaska?s North Slope and incorporates community assessment of the potential effects on loss of land, infrastructure, and other assets. This analysis will inform response strategies and planning by developing new methods of hazard assessment that can support community resilience in the North Slope and potentially serve as a model for advancing assessment and planning in other rural and urban communities. This research will expand traditional assessments of financial exposure to also include non-material factors such as values and priorities of diverse social groups within a community including a diverse set of stakeholders, ranging from multinational oil companies to individual subsistence hunters. This study surveys community views of asset importance and integrates results with a geophysical hazard data model for a coproduced community exposure map of the North Slope coast. This research will contribute to understanding the human and social dimensions of climate change impacts, including how social, economic, political, and cultural factors shape vulnerabilities and condition response strategies. Methods and findings could enhance nation-wide efforts in the United States to map community exposure to coastal climate hazards by demonstrating methods for, and the importance of systematically incorporating non-market values in exposure analysis.The objectives of the proposed research include adapting the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) coastal vulnerability index (CVI) to the Arctic context, and integrating results with formal asset databases and a spatial community landscape value model while working with affected communities during the process to coproduce exposure maps. Specifically, working with North Slope Alaskan communities the study will incorporate wind fetch (i.e., the open water distance over which wind can generate near shore waves, determined by sea ice extent) into the CVI and get community feedback on the results. In addition to community input on the CVI maps, coproducing the exposure maps includes the community assigning values to traditional land use places using existing spatial datasets and mapping and investigating specific sites threatened by coastal hazards with the aim to learn why exposed assets threaten the community.