NSF R2I2 Resilience Innovation Incubator for Cascadia Coastal Hazards

Coastal populations in the Pacific Northwest are increasingly threatened by impacts from natural hazards including flooding, erosion, and landslides. These hazards often overlap and intensify one another. This project will address the urgent need for coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest to identify and implement a range of possible solutions that are informed by local priorities and knowledge. Rapid advances in data sciences, Earth system science, and technologies have enabled assessment and the modeling of hazards, risks, and the effectiveness of reducing risks at a regional scale. By bringing together community members and professionals with researchers this project endeavors to collaboratively develop and test a suite of innovative solutions aimed at reducing risk and building long-term coastal community resilience. This incubator advances four types of solutions to coastal hazard risks. The incubator also tests different ways of reducing coastal hazard risks to enhance the resilience of all communities across the region. By focusing on both acute and chronic hazards, and by engaging with a wide range of partners across disciplines and sectors, this project advances scientific knowledge while promoting health and welfare by enhancing community preparedness and resilience. The knowledge and approaches developed through this project will have the potential to be applied broadly, offering a model for addressing coastal hazards in regions across the United States and beyond. In two pilot study use cases this project will explore assessment of and solutions to coastal hazards such as landslides, coastal erosion, and flooding. Broadly defined, the initial portfolio of four solution spaces address both chronic and acute coastal hazards, as well as their interactions; (a) natural and nature-based solutions (inclusive of field testing, simulations, modeling); (b) solutions for increasing community resilience grounded in assessing community assets, adaptive capacity, and alternatives; (c) community modeling solutions (hyper localized, assimilating existing data) that focus on the assessment and communication of risk and hazard science, and of knowledge across epistemological differences; and (d) solutions based on multi-hazard planning and decision support tools, in which the project will engage new technological platforms and partners. The incubator leverages years of regionally relevant Earth system science co-developed with communities to advance understanding of the four types of solutions explored. The project aims to 1) understand what solutions and engagement approaches to decide on solutions are most effective for reducing risk and enhancing community resilience to coastal hazards and 2) understand how these solutions/approaches can best be shared and how implementation can be promoted widely across the region and the nation. This effort leverages regional science and data integration across disciplines to identify hazard risks and model impact scenarios at a local level; a critical translational science lens to ensure practical utility of outputs and results, and a community-engaged and community-driven methodological approach that centers the experiences and priorities of local populations to drive solutions. 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.