CCEE’s Katherine Anarde receives federal funding to help underserved communities develop greater resilience to flooding
The Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Adaptation Partnerships Program (NOAA) announced in September that $3.9 million in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be awarded over four years to existing NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships (CAP) / Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) teams and expansion activity regions. The funding will be used to test, scale up, and transfer knowledge to build national adaptation to floods and wildfires.
According to the latest figures from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, the U.S. has sustained 371 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters since 1980, including 42 flooding events and 22 wildfires. These new funds will enable NOAA to help communities build adaptive capacity to coastal and inland flooding and wildfire risk across many U.S. regions, including the continental U.S., Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“Communities across the country are working to build resilience against climate change and unlock climate-smart economic growth,“ said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “This investment, part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, will strengthen connections among municipal planners, resource managers, business and policy leaders seeking to use the best available science and local expertise to address climate-related risks.”
The awarded projects are assessing tradeoffs and co-benefits for complex decision-making in communities facing coastal inundation and/or inland flooding, developing new or improved approaches for identifying and assessing tradeoffs and co-benefits of flood mitigation infrastructure options in communities affected by coastal inundation and/or inland flooding.
CCEE Assistant Professor Katherine Anarde received funding to study chronic flood risk in underserved North Carolina and Hawai’i coastal communities. The project will incorporate community workshops, measurements of flooding, and flood models to identify key vulnerabilities and impacts.
“In many of the communities we work in, locals say it floods ‘all the time.’” Anarde said. “We’re trying to put a number to that by measuring floods on land where people live. This evidence of flooding can be used in grants for flood mitigation projects, but those grants often require detailed project plans and assistance from technical consultants, which can be costly. Some of our community partners are in unincorporated areas that have little political representation at the county and state level, which just exacerbates the problem.”
This project — in collaboration with community partners; the Carolina Collaborative on Climate, Health, and Equity; and the Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments team — will build local capacity to compete for funding sources and flood mitigation infrastructure programs. The project involves a community-engaged modeling process, which will facilitate discussions about potential infrastructure investments, foster familiarity with flood risk data, and convene local and state officials with residents to strengthen those communication channels. The goal is to contribute to more equitable investments in climate resilience that benefit the communities in multiple ways, such as supporting local economies, improving reliable access to jobs and schools, and protecting key habitats and ecosystems.
The NOAA CAP/RISA program is an applied research and engagement program that expands society’s regional capacity to adapt to climate impacts in the U.S. CAP/RISA supports sustained, collaborative relationships that help communities build lasting and equitable climate resilience. Funded by five-year cooperative agreements with NOAA, the work is accomplished by teams of research institutions, nonprofit organizations, and state, local and tribal governments in multi-state regions.