Half of the U.S population lives in what is considered a "coastal region"; all of these communities are vulnerable to increased flooding, hurricanes, costal storms, landslides, and costal erosion. Losses from catastrophic recent hurricanes (Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria) are likely to be the costliest ever in terms of economic, social and physical impact. Protection against these events is expensive: protection against one additional foot of sea level rise sea is estimated to cost $200B nationally. Funding the services necessary to protect against sea level rise can take funding away from other community interests. Thus, there is clearly a need to safeguard infrastructure systems but do so in a way that promotes health and wellbeing benefits to coastal communities.
Historically, municipalities have focused on building “hard” infrastructure, such as sea walls, to mitigate flooding risk. Moving forward, however, communities need to go beyond maintaining the status quo to understand how they can thrive beyond crisis. For example, Communities may protect themselves from coastal flooding using “soft” green infrastructure (GI) such as wetlands, coastal parks, and rain gardens. Creating landscapes that people value and care for strengthens a community’s ability to absorb impact and bounce back from disaster. Making these investments strategically using in-depth understanding of the engineering possibilities and decision-making at the community level can help coastal communities build resilience to long-term coastal risks.
The CoH-N CoLab is doing just that. Their team specializes in engineering, environmental science, psychology, and urban planning. By using a team approach, the CoLab is able to explore the resilience of coastal cities using scenario analyses with state-of-the-art models to help communities understand their changing environmental landscape. At the same time, the CoLab members identify coastal urban design options, utilizing novel hybrid GI/hard infrastructure approaches, to enhance both flood protection and the health/wellbeing of citizens. This novel approach to flood protection design works towards increased social, environmental and economic resilience. ERI CoLab funding is essential in making this collaboration possible and protecting Virginia's coastal communities.
