CoPe EAGER: Modeling the Social Ecology of Coastal Flood Risk

由于沿海城市的持续扩张和环境变化性的增加，预计未来沿海洪灾将会恶化。不幸的是，许多沿海地区的人们缺乏必要的资源来避免在有洪灾风险的地区生活和工作，当洪灾发生时，他们经历了巨大的困难，他们的住房、健康和洪灾后恢复工作的能力都极其困难。相比之下，富裕的城市地区通常得到更好的保护，恢复得更快，甚至可能在洪水事件后经历重大改善。这引起了令人深感震惊的关切，即海平面上升和更频繁、更强烈的沿海洪灾事件不仅将给沿海社区造成巨大的人员和财产损失，而且还可能加深不平等，扩大社会分歧，并给贫穷和边缘化社区带来长期负担。这样的结果可能反过来创造有利于减少对政治体系的信任和更高水平的内乱的条件。该项目力求更好地了解沿海洪灾的影响如何在社会各阶层之间有所不同，并确定建模工具和干预措施，包括可用于减轻沿海洪灾风险和限制一连串负面后果的社区、政策和管理备选方案。该项目开发和测试了一个知识平台和行动框架，将精细分辨率洪水模拟与社会经济不平等分析结合在一起，以评估家庭和社区一级的快速和缓慢发生的沿海洪水风险和脆弱性，重点关注影响在社会各阶层的分布。进一步的分析评估对社区内和社区间治理的影响。试点研究集中在加利福尼亚州两个洪水风险较高的地区：洛杉矶大都市区和萨克拉门托-圣华金三角洲地区。这项研究的目标是评估与脆弱和差异化社区共同开发的洪水可视化工具在多大程度上能够确定公平、负担得起的特定地点干预措施，这些干预措施可以减轻洪水风险并限制负面社会后果，包括穷人的长期负担、有利于富人的政治后果以及有利于内乱的条件。这项研究为理解和评估洪水风险和社会经济不平等之间的动态关系开发了一个新的量化框架。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Coastal flooding is projected to worsen in the future due to a combination of continued expansion of coastal cities and increasing environmental variability. Unfortunately, many people in coastal areas lack the resources needed to avoid living and working in areas at risk of flooding, and experience great hardships when flooding occurs, finding it extremely difficult to recover their housing, health, and ability to return to work after flood events. In contrast, affluent urban areas are typically better protected, recover more quickly, and may even experience significant improvements after a flood event. This raises a deeply alarming concern that rising sea levels and more frequent and intense coastal flood events will not only impose enormous human and property costs on coastal communities, but might also deepen inequality, amplify social divisions and place long-term burdens on poor and marginalized communities. Such outcomes could in turn create conditions conducive to less trust in the political system and higher levels of civil unrest. This project seeks to better understand how the impacts of coastal flooding vary across social strata and identifies modeling tools and interventions, including community-based, policy and management options, that can be applied to mitigate coastal flood risks and constrain the cascade of negative outcomes. The work derives models that can inform policy debates over managing coastal flood risk, has the potential to empower vulnerable communities to engage in more effective and equitable flood planning and management, and expands workforce capacity in convergence approaches.This project develops and tests a knowledge platform and action framework that integrates fine-resolution flood modeling with socio-economic inequality analysis to assess fast and slow onset coastal flood risks and vulnerabilities at the household and community levels, with an emphasis on the distribution of impacts across social strata. Further analysis assesses implications for governance within and across communities. Pilot research focuses on two regions of California with high risks of flooding: the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Region. The goal of this research is to assess the extent to which flood visualization tools co-developed with vulnerable and differentiated communities can identify fair, affordable, site specific interventions that can mitigate flood risk and constrain negative social outcomes including long-term burdens on the poor, political outcomes that favor the rich, and conditions conducive to civil unrest. The research develops a novel quantitative framework for understanding and assessing the dynamic relationship between flood risk and socio-economic inequality.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.