NSF Arctic Social Science EAGER #2030474 (“Melt/Rise”) Co-PIs Cymene Howe & Dominic Boyer (2021-2024)
This project investigates a key physical process that ties the Arctic region to lower latitude coastal cities—the redistribution of water—in order to explore the possibility of shared sociopolitical and cultural adaptation responses to melting cryospheres and rising hydrospheres. Pilot research through EAGER “follows the water” from the melting North (Iceland and Greenland) to two coastal cities most impacted by Arctic melt (Cape Town, South Africa and Honolulu, United States, respectively). By tracking the physical, hydrological connections between these sites, the research will also test a new social scientific theory, “hydrological globalization,” which suggests that locations physically affected and connected through changing cryo/hydrological processes may also share socioenvironmental similarities in adaptation responses. Designed around a new modeling tool developed by NASA physicists, the “gradient fingerprint map” (GFM), exploratory research will analyze the relationships between specific sites of melting ice and sea level rise in coastal cities to investigate whether these physically-linked sites may also share socioenvironmental similarities in their adaptation practices and priorities. Globalization studies have “followed,” for example, commodities, migratory populations and media to demonstrate human connectivities globally. However, social scientific theories of globalization have paid less attention to physical drivers, such as Earth Systems, in understanding social connectivity. A key premise of the proposed research and which compels testing the theory of “hydrological globalization,” is that rapidly changing global environmental conditions may be linking distant communities in new ways.
NSF Sociology #2116488 (“Collaborative Proposal: Urban Flooding and Residential Adaptation”), PI James Elliott; Co-PI: Kevin Loughran (2022-2025)
As flooding poses mounting challenges for inland and coastal cities, policy aimed at removing people and housing from harm’s way enters complex, racially segregated contexts. The goal of the proposed project is to improve understanding of this complexity by advancing a new line of population-centered research that analyzes managed retreat from the perspective of the diverse urban populations, neighborhoods, and resettlement systems involved. Objective 1: Acquire, validate, and merge consumer data, including individual residential histories, for all households moving to, from, and within neighborhoods of managed retreat nationwide. Objective 2: Leverage those data to distinguish what happens to households from what happens to neighborhoods when the latter are targeted for retreat. Objective 3: Conduct stratified random surveys to quantitatively assess the multiple forms and directions that such residential mobility takes as it scales up from households to targeted neighborhoods to local resettlement systems. Objective 4: Use strategically collected interview data to deepen understanding of how those multiple forms and directions of residential mobility intersect with perceptions of flood risk, neighborhood quality, sense of community, and notions of “ideal” forms of relocation and adaptation for different groups. Products will advance knowledge of the social dynamics of residential relocation as a solution to urban flooding and contribute to data-driven decision-making that recognizes the role of equity in communities’ abilities to adapt to environmental risks that are predicted to rise in cost and severity in the coming years.
Texas Sea Grant “Identification of cost-effective green stormwater infrastructure to mitigate flooding in Houston’s vulnerable communities and improve Galveston Bay fisheries” Co-PIs Jessica Eisma, Dominic Boyer, Siddarth Saksena, and David Coursey (2022-2024)
The study incorporates an integrated hydrologic and hydraulic (H&H) modeling framework built using the Interconnected Channel and Pond Routing (ICPR) model that combines all the physical drivers of flooding in a single system to provide a more realistic impact assessment of GSI (green stormwater infrastructure) implementation on flood mitigation for present and future climate scenarios. The aim of this research is to examine the potential of GSI to reduce expected climate change-induced increases in flood risk for vulnerable communities in highly urbanized coastal areas. This aim will be met by completing the following three major objectives: (1) simulate flood depths more accurately by using an integrated H&H model; (2) quantify the flood risk-reduction potential of GSI under various climate change scenarios; (3) develop a strategy for increasing GSI project support among historically vulnerable and under-resourced communities.
NSF Strengthening American Infrastructure #2323312 (“Enhancing Stormwater Resilience in Coastal Urban Communities”) Co-PIs Dominic Boyer & Albert Pope (2024-2026)
Enhancing Stormwater Resilience in Coastal Urban Communities (ESRC), takes stormwater infrastructure in coastal urban communities as its focal infrastructural case with a research focus on three neighborhoods of Houston. ESRC asks: can participatory design strategies aimed at enhancing infrastructural citizenship capacity combined with green stormwater infrastructure initiatives lead to storm and flood risk reduction? ESRC explores two interventions to improve upon conventional stormwater infrastructure approaches and address the urban adaptation gap identified by the IPCC: (1) the capacity of “infrastructural citizenship” (direct civic engagement in infrastructural design, implementation and maintenance processes) to improve stormwater infrastructure design by harnessing local knowledge of flood risks and by engaging a broader range of stakeholders in the imagination of possible social solutions, and (2) the potential of green stormwater infrastructure techniques (e.g., rain gardens, bioswales, green detention/retention basins) to create more frequent, affordable and substantive opportunities for civic engagement than conventional stormwater infrastructure.