Doctoral Dissertation Research: Anticipation, Catastrophic Flooding, and Canal Infrastructure in Urban Coastal Settings

洪水风险是许多沿海居民长期关注的问题，可以投入相当大的努力来减轻这些风险。然而，在许多情况下，预测的未来洪水风险足够大，基础设施减灾战略是有限的。在这种情况下，居民和其他利益相关者如何适应快速海岸变化的前景？本论文研究探讨了沿海城市水道规划洪水事件和气候变化的社会，政治和物质影响。使用人类学方法的补充，该项目调查了政府和社区面临的各种问题和可能性，因为他们考虑调整已经受到有毒沃茨，受限的基础设施和具体景观挑战的地方的生活。在关注城市洪水风险管理方面，该项目还有助于更好地了解基础设施发展和扩建的前景和挑战。该研究支持对一名研究生进行经验数据收集和分析方法方面的培训，并通过学术和非学术途径，包括向与环境政治和政策有关的组织广泛传播研究结果，这项研究汇集了环境和基础设施人类学、关键的土著和定居者殖民地研究以及气候变化和危机人类学等方面的奖学金，研究人们如何想象，预期，并呼吁在重塑沿海景观的各种可能性。研究人员研究了水和基础设施如何被理解，管理和作为这些挑战的一部分采取行动，以及作为气候变化的多方面威胁所揭示的道德，政治和知识，面对目前的形成和沿海景观的持续存在。研究设计包括使用参与观察，访谈，生活史，话语分析和档案研究，以检查变化的过程和努力，以应对可能的灾难。由此产生的研究结果允许更好地了解城市环境中沿海洪水风险的社会和经济适应性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

Flood risks are a chronic concern for many coastal inhabitants, and considerable effort may be invested to mitigate those risks. In many settings, however, projected future flood risks are sufficiently great that infrastructural mitigation strategies are limited. In such settings, how do residents and other stakeholders adapt to the prospect of rapid coastal change? This dissertation research examines the social, political, and material effects of planning for flood events and climate change for coastal urban waterways. Using a complement of anthropological methods, the project investigates the varied questions and possibilities around flooding faced by governments and communities as they consider adjusting life in places that are already challenged by toxic waters, constrained infrastructure, and concretized landscapes. In attending to concerns around urban flood risk management, this project also contributes to a greater understanding of the promises and challenges of infrastructure development and expansion. The research supports the training of a graduate student in methods of empirical data collection and analysis, and results are disseminated widely through academic and non-academic avenues, including to organizations concerned with environmental politics and policies.This research brings together scholarship in anthropologies of the environment and infrastructure, critical indigenous and settler colonial studies, and anthropologies of climate change and crisis, to examine how people imagine, anticipate, and call upon diverse possibilities in remaking coastal landscapes. The researcher examines how water and infrastructure are understood, managed, and acted upon as part of these challenges and the ethics, politics, and knowledge that are revealed as the multifaceted threats of climate change confront the present formation and continued existence of coastal landscapes. The research design includes the use of participant observation, interviews, life histories, discourse analysis, and archival research to examine processes of change and efforts to respond in anticipation of possible catastrophes. The resulting findings allow for greater understandings of social and economic adaptations to coastal flood risks in urban settings.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.