Political Ecology of Flood Mitigation: Coastal Communities Mapping Floods

Keywords: Coastal Community, Flood Management, Flood Mitigation, Community Science, Transformative Adaptation, Political Ecology
Session Type: Virtual Lightning Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 33

Abstract

Coastal communities are increasingly faced with the impacts of climate change, from sea-level rise to extreme weather events like Hurricane Ida(2021), Henri or superstorm Sandy 2012 on one hand, and on the other hand more frequent could-burst events which both are likely to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change.

Flood mitigation and adaptation measures require critical data collection on a hyper-local scale, the community scale and the success of these measures depend on how they fit with the communities needs and perspectives (Lowry & Feinen, 2013; Le Coz et al., 2016; Sy et al.,2019; Johannessen and Monsert, 2020). Taking this into account community-scale initiatives and projects are a very promising intersection of capacities that create the opportunity for transformative adaption. Projects like FloodNET(NYC) which engage with coastal communities can facilitate better risk communication or create a “learning infrastructure” overall leading to overcoming adaptation inertia. This study examines local coastal communities that are engaged in the process of flood mitigation or flood mapping through a political ecology framework to ask what are the barriers and opportunities to effective public engagement in these projects.