Doctoral Dissertation Research: Flood Infrastructure and Heritage Preservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry

南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿和周围低地地区的年洪水增加了50%，在过去的4年里，该地区每年都会遭遇一场大飓风。尽管这个地势低洼的地区有很长的洪灾历史，但这种快速增长引发了一场危机言论，导致市政府将洪灾列为首要任务，并开始迅速采取行动保护当地环境。该项目对博士生进行严格和有经验依据的数据收集和分析方法的培训，研究查尔斯顿暴雨排水系统、海堤以及稻堤和闸门网络的创建和维护，以绘制和分析遗产遗址的保护图。项目结果将以这样一种方式传播，以帮助规划者探索更公平的方式来定义与特定社区需求和愿望有关的风险、阻力和复原力。最后，这项研究项目旨在为南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿的当地社区抗击洪水的影响提供帮助。布莱恩·沃尔特将在加州大学圣克鲁斯分校的梅丽莎·考德威尔博士的指导下，通过在查尔斯顿低地进行人种学田野调查，研究洪水与遗产话语和实践之间的关系。在此期间，他将在受海平面上升影响的分层地点工作。在这些地点，研究人员将使用访谈、参与者观察和参与式地理信息系统来了解个人如何区分环境中的遗产、体验海平面上升和为维护洪水基础设施而战。这项工作旨在通过提供一个人种学案例来更好地解释海平面上升是如何经历社会经济的，从而促进关于缓解环境变化的辩论：这是对关注宏观水平变化并假设同等数量的洪水对生命造成同等损害的量化数据模型的必要补充。这一结果将有助于使种族和环境之间的交集在政策对话中可见，并有助于促进确定标准化政策概念的替代定义的方法，例如在当前确定海平面上升影响的空间研究中使用的价值、脆弱性或遗产地。该奖项反映了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。

Annual flooding in Charleston, South Carolina, and the surrounding Lowcountry has increased 50% and the region has suffered a major hurricane every year for the past 4 years. Although the low-lying region has a long history of flooding, this rapid increase has sparked a crisis discourse, leading the city government to name flooding "the #1 priority" and begin swift actions to preserve the local environs. This project, which trains a doctoral student in methods of rigorous and empirically-grounded data collection and analysis, examines the creation and maintenance of Charleston's storm drainage systems, seawalls, and networks of rice dikes and floodgates to map and analyze the preservation of heritage sites. Project findings will be disseminated in such a way that aids planners explore more equitable ways to define risk, resistance, and resilience in regards to specific community needs and desires. Finally, this research project aims to produce work that will be helpful to local communities fighting the impacts of flooding in Charleston, South Carolina. Brian Walter, under the supervision of Dr. Melissa Caldwell of the University of California at Santa Cruz will investigate the relationship between flood water and heritage discourses and practices by conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Charleston Lowcountry. During this period, he will work across stratified locations suffering the effects of sea-level-rise. At these sites, the researcher will use interviews, participant observation, and participatory GIS to gain knowledge about how individuals differentially define heritage in the environment, experience sea-level rise and fight for the maintenance of flood infrastructure. This work aims to contribute to debates about environmental change mitigation, by offering an ethnographic case to better explain how sea-level-rise is experienced socioeconomically: an essential complement to quantitative data models that focus on macro-level change and assume an equal amount of flooding causes equal damage to life. This outcome will help make the intersection between race and the environment visible in policy conversations and help promote methodologies to determine alternative definitions of normed policy concepts such as value, vulnerability, or heritage site employed in current spatial studies determining the impacts of sea-level rise.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.