Doctoral Dissertation Research: Planning Flood Resilient Infrastructure

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Planners and engineers in municipalities and localities around the United States are increasingly challenged to develop more efficient and technologically sound methods for contending with severe disasters, such as wildfires, floods and natural disasters. In Houston, five 500-year floods have hit in the last five years according to current Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) flood risk designations. Every government from local to federal is challenged with building cities and communities resilient to changing environmental circumstances. This project investigates how local engineers, developers, industry representatives, and public officials involved in infrastructure development navigate these changing conditions in the development of flood mitigation plans. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in developing more effective methods for communicating science and the scientific method in disaster and flood mitigation planning. The research project investigates environmental impact and response at a central node in the oil and gas industry, Houston, Texas. The major metropolitan city and its industrial infrastructure is uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise, coastal erosion, and increasingly devastating storms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) measures current sea level rise at the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel as higher than almost anywhere else in the world. The research will include twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork (including participant-observation and semi-structured interviews as well as mapping exercises) in Houston examining public and private sector stakeholders roles in flood infrastructure planning. As threats of intensified flooding loom, how do these stakeholders negotiate entangled fears of social, economic, and environmental disasters? Through qualitative and spatial analysis of ethnographic and archival evidence of flood infrastructure preparations, this research explores the dichotomy between symbolism and expertise where scientific knowledge, public narrative, and vested interest may influence sharply different approaches in infrastructural planning.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.