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担心的问题，可能需要投入相当大的努力来缓解这些风险。然而，在许多情况下，预测的未来洪水风险足够大，基础设施缓解战略有限。在这种情况下，居民和其他利益攸关方如何适应沿海迅速变化的前景？本论文研究沿海城市航道洪水事件和气候变化规划的社会、政治和物质影响。利用补充的人类学方法，该项目调查了政府和社区在考虑调整已经受到有毒水域、受限的基础设施和具体景观挑战的地方的生活时所面临的各种问题和可能性。在关注有关城市洪水风险管理的问题时，该项目还有助于更好地了解基础设施开发和扩建的承诺和挑战。这项研究支持对研究生进行实证性数据收集和分析方法的培训，并通过学术和非学术途径广泛传播结果，包括向关注环境政治和政策的组织传播。这项研究汇集了环境和基础设施人类学、批判性土著和定居者殖民研究以及气候变化和危机人类学方面的学术知识，以考察人们如何想象、预测和呼吁在重塑沿海景观方面的各种可能性。研究人员考察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，以及随着气候变化的多方面威胁面临当前沿海景观的形成和持续存在而揭示的伦理、政治和知识。研究设计包括使用参与者观察、访谈、生活史、话语分析和档案研究，以检查变化的过程和应对可能发生的灾难的努力。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。

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.