Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Planning for New England Communities: First Steps and Next Steps

Hurricane Irene tearing Vermont roads and bridges apart and Superstorm Sandy ripping through coastal areas; such phenomenal events are being joined by more frequent rain, tide and wind impacts that are disrupting communities and risking property and lives. New challenges arise from weather events that are driven by a less stable climate. The key difference between what communities already plan for and climate adaptation planning is the level of uncertainty about how impacts may change in the future and the potentially enormous and devastating damages that a community may sustain. This Guide presents an overview of that task, with links to the rapidly expanding guidelines and tools available to local governments and a suggested way of thinking about this responsibility as an extension of what local governments are already doing

Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Planning for New England Communities: First Steps and Next Steps [Report]

New challenges arise from weather events that are driven by a less stable climate. The key difference between what communities already plan for and climate adaptation planning is the level of uncertainty about how impacts may change in the future and the potentially enormous and devastating damages that a community may sustain. Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Planning for New England Communities: First Steps and Next Steps (2016) presents an overview of that task, with links to the rapidly expanding guidelines and tools available to local governments and a suggested way of thinking about this responsibility as an extension of what local governments are already doing

Don\u27t Let Their Future Blow Away: An Integrated Methodology to Inform School Leaders of the Dimensions and Determinants of School Vulnerability Leading to Disaster Learning Loss

School leaders play a key role in the critical functions of emergency response in a school system, including purposefully sustaining safe, secure, and healthy learning environments for all students before and after a disaster. Despite these values, school leaders remain underprepared and often unaware of the vulnerabilities associated with weather, climate, and other disaster events and the potential threat that climate change poses to both student achievement and access to education. This study presents school-leaders with a landscape-scale geospatial vulnerability assessment of school districts exposed to, or threatened by, hurricanes in order to improve mitigation efforts in schools. In this study, the researcher utilized Hazus, a nationally recognized, standardized, and integrated multi-hazard loss estimation methodology, run within a full-featured Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology platform. Hazus was used to estimate the number of school districts containing high densities of damaged schools after hurricane event scenarios. Schools were identified and mapped based on loss of use days as quantified by a function of the damage caused by wind produced by a specified hurricane scenario, a school\u27s susceptibility to climate change based on location, and proximity to sources of impairment. As a result of this work, a new term was conceptualized: Disaster Learning Loss (DLL). The quantifiable rate of Disaster Learning Loss will provide a tool that school leaders can use to understand dimensions and determinants of school vulnerability to hazards while considering the potential academic impact that climate change will have on student achievement

Trans-disciplinary Collaboration to Enhance Coastal Resilience: Envisioning a National Community Modeling Initiative

This section presents a synthesis of the major outcomes from the coastal resilience workshops. This paper is based on the presentations and discussions that have been guided by the Chair and numerous stakeholders such as university researchers, Non Governmental Organizations, and federal, state, and local governments. SURA’s workshop series promotes collaboration and fully-integrated processes, and it should be noted that the actual workshop is only a first step; the follow-up work is likely to continue for years. The major results from this workshop relate to the development of trans-disciplinary approaches that help a community to bounce back after hazardous events such as hurricanes, coastal storms, and flooding – rather than simply rebuilding in the aftermath. The workshops have included participants from academia, industry, and government. They provide opportunity to share coastal resilience research and projects focused on helping the community to rebound quickly from climate and extreme weather related events, including sea level rise. The purpose of the paper is to showcase how social and natural scientists can collaborate to reduce the negative human health, environmental, and economic effects of coastal hazards

Trans-disciplinary Collaboration to Enhance Coastal Resilience: Envisioning a National Community Modeling Initiative

This section presents a synthesis of the major outcomes from the coastal resilience workshops. This paper is based on the presentations and discussions that have been guided by the Chair and numerous stakeholders such as university researchers, Non Governmental Organizations, and federal, state, and local governments. SURA’s workshop series promotes collaboration and fully-integrated processes, and it should be noted that the actual workshop is only a first step; the follow-up work is likely to continue for years. The major results from this workshop relate to the development of trans-disciplinary approaches that help a community to bounce back after hazardous events such as hurricanes, coastal storms, and flooding – rather than simply rebuilding in the aftermath. The workshops have included participants from academia, industry, and government. They provide opportunity to share coastal resilience research and projects focused on helping the community to rebound quickly from climate and extreme weather related events, including sea level rise. The purpose of the paper is to showcase how social and natural scientists can collaborate to reduce the negative human health, environmental, and economic effects of coastal hazards

Flood hazard hydrology: interdisciplinary geospatial preparedness and policy

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Floods rank as the deadliest and most frequently occurring natural hazard worldwide, and in 2013 floods in the United States ranked second only to wind storms in accounting for loss of life and damage to property. While flood disasters remain difficult to accurately predict, more precise forecasts and better understanding of the frequency, magnitude and timing of floods can help reduce the loss of life and costs associated with the impact of flood events. There is a common perception that 1) local-to-national-level decision makers do not have accurate, reliable and actionable data and knowledge they need in order to make informed flood-related decisions, and 2) because of science--policy disconnects, critical flood and scientific analyses and insights are failing to influence policymakers in national water resource and flood-related decisions that have significant local impact. This dissertation explores these perceived information gaps and disconnects, and seeks to answer the question of whether flood data can be accurately generated, transformed into useful actionable knowledge for local flood event decision makers, and then effectively communicated to influence policy. Utilizing an interdisciplinary mixed-methods research design approach, this thesis develops a methodological framework and interpretative lens for each of three distinct stages of flood-related information interaction: 1) data generation—using machine learning to estimate streamflow flood data for forecasting and response; 2) knowledge development and sharing—creating a geoanalytic visualization decision support system for flood events; and 3) knowledge actualization—using heuristic toolsets for translating scientific knowledge into policy action. Each stage is elaborated on in three distinct research papers, incorporated as chapters in this dissertation, that focus on developing practical data and methodologies that are useful to scientists, local flood event decision makers, and policymakers. Data and analytical results of this research indicate that, if certain conditions are met, it is possible to provide local decision makers and policy makers with the useful actionable knowledge they need to make timely and informed decisions

Exploring the potential impacts of climate change on North America\u27s Laurentian Great Lakes tourism sector

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing the global hospitality and tourism sector in the coming century and, given the important role that weather and climate play in all aspects of the tourism experience, tourism businesses owners need to start thinking about and enacting climate change adaptation strategies now. This work has utilized a combination of social science and physical science methods to (1) understand how the Great Lakes tourism sector could be impacted by climate change and (2) provide some insights into how researchers can help business owners prepare for these potential impacts. Overall, the results of this work illustrate the challenges that tourism managers face in terms of adapting to climate change despite their high awareness of the importance of weather and climate to their businesses; however, creative methods of communicating climate change science, such as through the use of data visualization techniques and scenario planning, could help overcome some of these barriers. In addition, the results of the analysis of atmospheric-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) and Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model simulations show that climate change could lead to significant changes in winter weather and extreme weather in the Great Lakes region and, subsequently, impact the region\u27s tourism sector. Future research can build on these findings by continuing to explore the best means of quantifying climate change impacts for the tourism sector, evaluate the best way of translating those findings into actionable science for tourism business owners, and expand the dialogue around weather preparedness and long-term sector sustainability

Measuring community resilience to disaster

"May 2014."Thesis supervisor: Dr. Timothy Matisziw.Although geographic studies of disaster vulnerability and resilience have been central to the formulation of federal emergency management policy, recent community resilience research has diverged significantly from the core foci of the discipline: the importance of place, of scale, and the complexity of human-environment interactions. Three disconcerting trends in the literature can be observed. First, there has been a heavy reliance on the tools of linear systems science to characterize and measure the human dimensions of resilience - dimensions which are increasingly examined in terms of their nonlinearity, dynamism and complexity in other scientific disciplines. Second, most of the variables typically used as proxies for community resilience are not actually indicative of community-scale processes, but rather describe individual-scale behavioral and household-scale socioeconomic characteristics. Third, the current practice of aggregating resilience indicators to large, heterogeneous geographic areas in order to communicate community-level resilience can actually mask and mischaracterize the local, place-specific variability of those indicators. This thesis presents a rethinking of geography's conceptual model of population disaster resilience and the methods used to measure it at the community level. Drawing on diverse theoretical linkages on the subject from across the social and natural sciences, and on the current perspectives and information requirements of local emergency managers, a more holistic and meaningful approach to measuring community resilience is proposed. Specifically, in recognition of a need to integrate both expert and lay local perspectives into resilience calculations, a system for assimilating such qualitative data into quantitative analysis is adapted from complexity theory. Also, in acknowledgement of the multiple levels at which resilience-building processes may operate in human systems, and the unique ways disaster resilience can manifest in different places, a new framework for balIncludes bibliographical references (pages 158-173)