Enhancing Coastal Resilience through Participatory Transformation of Barrier Islands

Barrier-island communities face flooding due to rising sea levels and stronger storms, and typical adaptations (protect, accommodate, retreat) may not keep up with increasing risks. Communities are now considering extreme adaptations, such as allowing an island section to ‘return to nature’ by removing roadways and other infrastructure. But these extreme adaptations transform the natural processes of and the community’s relationship with barriers. The effects on flood risks at nearby communities are not well understood, and it is not clear whether communities will ‘welcome the water’ or reject it as opposing their sense of place. This Disaster Resilience Research Grant (DRRG) project explores participatory transformation of barriers. Stakeholders will provide insights on place meanings across the barrier island and how floods affect these places and their connections to the community. The project also quantifies how flooding at a natural island section may change the hazard at neighboring communities, and whether these locations can be selected to minimize the risks while maximizing community attachments. These activities provide a framework for participatory transformation, as well as advance technologies for flood risk modeling that can be expanded to improve disaster resilience for communities along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts. This research also supports an immersive experience for students to collaborate across engineering and social-science disciplines to tackle the challenges of climate change. This Disaster Resilience Research Grant project advances understanding of how local erosion events contribute to floods at neighboring communities; how these floods can be managed by allowing barrier sections to return to nature; and how such a transformation, when informed and deliberated by community stakeholders, may affect community place meanings. The research will be organized on the following objectives: (O1) identify ‘acceptable’ locations for extreme adaptation of barrier systems; (O2) quantify reductions in flood risk from extreme adaptations at ‘acceptable’ and other locations; and (O3) assess changes in stakeholders’ perceptions about extreme adaptation techniques for barrier islands. Via high-resolution modeling of flooding subject to possible barrier configurations and future climate scenarios, this project quantifies the scales of flooding at neighboring communities. And via science co-production, this project investigates how the community’s attachment to the barrier island may be increased if stakeholders take an active role in the transformation. This project uses transformative research approaches and engagement to facilitate new approaches to community-led management and adaptation of barriers, enable improved efforts to plan for the consequences of landform changes and development, and advance the integration of the coastal science, engineering, and adaptation disciplines. 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.