CNH-L: Climate Change Adaptation in a Coupled Geomorphic-Economic Coastal System

本项目将分析海岸过程与土地利用和海岸工程经济决策相互作用的方式，以确定适应气候风险的性质和时间。它解决了自然力量，经济决策和公共政策在很长一段时间内的相互作用，以确定人类住区的建筑环境和模式如何应对海平面上升和相关的海岸线变化。这些问题是美国人口的一个重要组成部分，特别是沿着东海岸和墨西哥湾，面临持续的洪水和风暴破坏的关注。 这项研究的一个基本目标是提供知识和工具，以便在应对沿海和环境变化方面及时向前看。研究结果将进一步了解海滩和沿海环境如何对各种风暴相关情景作出反应。 它还将提供洞察房地产市场如何对环境条件、公共政策、科学知识以及个人态度和价值观的复杂变化做出反应。项目的技术描述不断变化的气候和地貌过程可能会增加未来在海岸生活的风险，并增加通过工程减少这些风险的价值。然而，同样的因素往往会提高成本，降低这些工程行动的有效性的确定性。这些动态最终可能使其过于昂贵，继续沿海居住在其目前的形式。对自然环境和人造环境进行改造的综合选择不仅将决定沿海社区的特征，还将决定向人烟稀少或无人居住的国家过渡的性质。自然系统将由最先进的三维沿海地貌模型来代表，以显著改善对沿海系统随时间演变方式的预测。经济系统将通过美国东海岸两个社区的房地产市场的新规范进行调查，并将通过调查和定性研究了解居民对沿海设施和基础设施的风险和偏好的知识。 该项目将调查公共政策，包括政府管理的保险，工程项目，救灾和基础设施，将影响经济决策和沿海环境的方式。 由此产生的建模结构将是模拟社区-环境相互作用以应对长期气候变化的重要一步，代码和模型结构将可用于其他研究和政策决策。

ABSTRACTA non-technical description explaining the broader significance of the projectThis project will analyze the ways in which coastal processes and economic decisions about land use and coastal engineering interact to determine the nature and timing of adaptation to climate risk. It addresses the interactions of natural forces, economic decisions, and public policies over long time horizons to determine how the built environment and patterns of human settlement react to rising seas and related coastline changes. These issues are of concern to a significant part of the US population, especially along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, that faces persistent flooding and storm damage. A fundamental aim of this research is to provide knowledge and tools to look further forward in time in responding to coastal and environmental changes. The results will advance knowledge about how beaches and coastal environments react to various storm-related scenarios. It will also provide insight into how real-estate markets react to complex changes in environmental conditions, public policies, scientific knowledge, and individual attitudes and values.A technical description of the projectChanging climatic and geomorphological processes are likely to increase risks of living at the coast in the future and to increase the value of reducing those risks through engineering. However, the same factors will tend to elevate the cost and decrease the certainty of the effectiveness of those engineering actions. These dynamics may eventually make it too expensive to continue coastal habitation in its current forms. Coupled choices about modifications to the natural and built environment will determine not only the characteristics of coastal communities but also the nature of transitions to less inhabited or uninhabited states. Natural systems will be represented by state-of-the-art three-dimensional coastal geomorphology models to significantly improve predictions about the way coastal systems evolve over time. The economic system will be investigated through a novel specification of the property markets in two US east coast communities and will be informed by surveys and qualitative research into residents' knowledge of risks and preferences for coastal amenities and infrastructure. The project will investigate the way that public policies, including government-managed insurance, engineering projects, disaster relief, and infrastructure, will impact both economic decisions and the coastal environment. The resulting modeling structure will be a significant step forward in modeling community-environment interactions in response to climate change over long time scales, and the code and model structure will be made both accessible for additional research and policy decisions.