Workshop: Enhancing Resilience of Coastal Caribbean Communities: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for a Changing Climate

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This award will support a workshop to promote North American collaborations in coastal reliance between researchers from the United States, Cuba, and Mexico. The workshop will take place in Havana, Cuba, and will focus on identifying comparative strategies that can be deployed to deal with local impacts of environmental change in the Caribbean region will take place in Havana, Cuba. An interdisciplinary group of ecologists, hydrologists, oceanographers, economists, social scientists, engineers, architects, and stakeholders will discuss potential solutions to coastal resilience challenges in Caribbean communities, with a focus on South Florida, Cuba, and Mexico. The discussions of the workshop will be summarized in a publication on shared best practices and strategies for achieving resilience across coastal communities. In addition, the workshop will result in the creation of an international network of researchers working on coastal resilience across the Caribbean region. By including postdoctoral scholars and early-career researchers in the workshop as both facilitators and participants, they will have the opportunity for professional development. Furthermore, the pipeline of scientists working on these important societal grand challenge issues will be strengthened. The workshop will engage American, Cuban and Mexican scientists, thus creating a broadly diverse group of researchers working together to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies for achieving coastal resilience.The group will discuss the state of knowledge on vulnerability of critical human and physical infrastructure to impending climate changes and projected sea level rise, as well as the gaps in research that need to be filled to enhance community resilience. The group will also focus on the urban ecology of the major coastal cities of Miami, Havana, and Cancun, with an emphasis on comparative strategies for increasing resilience in different countries. The participants will develop an integrative framework that will include natural processes, engineering/architecture, economy, social processes, and cyberinfrastructure. By using this approach, the participants aim to develop potentially transformative new perspectives to address coastal community challenges under changing climate change scenarios. Specifically, the workshop will seek to develop: 1) an improved understanding of the challenges facing Caribbean coastal regions vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, 2) an agenda of research needed to improve the resilience and adaption of these Caribbean communities, and 3) a coordinated framework of experts poised to develop and disseminate such solutions to vulnerable communities.