Adaptations to Repetitive Flooding: Understanding Cross-Cultural and Legal Possibilities for Long-Term Solutions to Flooding Disaster

北极研究人员和国家之间越来越多的共识是，为了实现社会目标，包括更好地理解和适应极端事件和灾害，应用北极科学知识是很重要的。在阿拉斯加和整个美国，持续和习惯性的洪水是一种特别昂贵和具有挑战性的灾难。在美国国家洪水保险计划（NFIP）所涵盖的所有财产中，重复性洪水财产仅占1%，但却造成了约38%的索赔。在阿拉斯加，尽管经历了反复的洪水事件，但因纽皮亚特人和其他北极土著社区的反复洪水解决方案尚未出台。此外，有一些迹象表明，在社区一级而不是在家庭一级进行决策时，重新安置的政策选择更具挑战性，因为在土著社区往往是这样。这个项目针对这个复杂的问题提出了两条研究思路。首先，我们将分析遭受反复洪水的社区的搬迁政策选择。我们将通过分析社区和个人在阿拉斯加和美国迁移的时间和地点的政策应用，包括在迁移场景中如何使用官僚自由裁量权来实现这一目标。这项分析包括绘制搬迁政策解决方案的政治和经济成本、历史推论和可行性——从建立全新的机构，到修改当前的减灾和灾害政策，以包括更广泛的搬迁选择。绘制可能的解决方案来应对反复发生的洪水是至关重要的，可能会应用到美国各地的数百个社区。我们的第二条调查路线是从因纽特人的角度来研究什么构成了文化相关的搬迁。我们假设“适应”与“应对”是不同的，后者是单纯的生存，而前者是一种主观的幸福体验，伴随着生活方式对社会和/或生态压力的变化。通过从因纽特人的角度分析适应，我们将更好地理解文化主体性如何与灾害反应相互作用，从而为与文化相关的适应策略提供信息。我们分析的最后将对这些调查线进行三角测量，以了解文化多样性和灾害应对可能性如何在成功减轻风险方面相互关联。该奖项由极端事件预测和恢复能力（PREEVENTS）项目共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is growing consensus among Arctic researchers and nations that it is important to operationalize Arctic scientific knowledge for the purposes of achieving societal goals, including better understanding and adapting to extreme events and disasters. In Alaska and throughout the US, persistent and habitual floods are a particularly expensive and challenging disaster to solve. Repetitive flooding properties account for only 1% of all properties represented by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) yet are responsible for approximately 38% of the claims made. In Alaska, solutions to repetitive flooding for Inupiat and other Indigenous communities in the Arctic have not been forthcoming, despite experiencing repetitive flooding events. Additionally, there is some indication that policy options for relocation are more challenging when decision-making occurs at the community level, as it often does in Indigenous communities, instead of at the household level.This project addresses two lines of inquiry into this complex problem. First, we will analyze relocation policy options for communities experiencing repetitive flooding. We will do so by analyzing policy application when and where communities and individuals have relocated in Alaska and the US, including how bureaucratic discretion has been used in relocation scenarios. Included in this analysis is mapping the political and economic costs, historical corollaries, and feasibility of relocation policy solutions - from creating wholly new agencies, to amending current hazard mitigation and disaster policies to include a wider range of options for relocation. Mapping possible solutions to repetitive flooding is critical and might be applied to hundreds of communities across the United States. Our second line of inquiry is to examine what constitutes culturally relevant relocation from an Inupiat perspective. We hypothesize that 'adaptation' is distinct from 'coping,' the latter being bare survival, while the former is a subjective experience of wellbeing, following changes in lifeways in response to social and/or ecological pressure. By analyzing adaptation from an Inupiat perspective, we will better understand how cultural subjectivities interact with disaster response to inform culturally-relevant adaptation strategies. The end of our analysis will be to triangulate these lines of inquiry to understand how cultural multiplicity and disaster response possibilities are interconnected in successful risk mitigation. This award is cofunded by the Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events (PREEVENTS) programThis 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.