Brown-led team to establish climate and health research hub for New England coast
Brown University
A new federal grant will enable a team of researchers led by a Brown University scientist to bring together experts and stakeholders in an effort to create a coastal resilience research hub aimed at addressing climate change related challenges faced by low-lying communities in New England.
The National Science Foundation grant is expected to
total approximately $6 million over five years.
The team will include eight faculty members from Brown as well as 21 researchers from University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, University of New Hampshire, Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems.
The group will be led
by Emanuele Di Lorenzo, a professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental
and Planetary Sciences at Brown, and Sarah Lummis, a researcher at the
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and executive director of the
new hub.
The team plans to initially work with four coastal communities in New England — one industrial port and one commercial fishing port in both Rhode Island and Maine — but eventually they hope to bring solutions from these pilot communities to the entire New England coast and beyond.
The goal is to create a set of systems and establish a network of
experts that members of these communities can turn to for help developing
strategies to become more resilient to climate change, including tools for data
collection and predicting rising water levels.
“The concept of the hub stems from the fact that in the past, a lot of coastal communities, sometimes in connection with the research institutions, have been addressing solution strategies for resilience on their own,” Di Lorenzo said.
“This has led in general to a fragmented approach to
coastal resilience where individual communities are trying to develop their own
strategies. A hub can help communities share data, tools and human
infrastructure to essentially accelerate the process, especially for places
that wouldn’t necessarily have the expertise to be able to define what tools
and strategies they need in the first place.”
The project will be known as 3CRS — Community-driven
Coastal Climate Research and Solutions. The work will be part of NSF’s
Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, which
aims to strengthen states’ research competitiveness and fund workforce
development initiatives.
The pilot communities the researchers will work with are
the Port of Providence, the Port of Galilee in Narragansett, Rhode Island, as
well as ports in Rockland and Bath, Maine. Each is part of a larger
municipality and includes people and groups whose livelihood, property or
business connect them with the coast.
The team will initially work with four coastal
communities in New England — the Port of Providence, the Port of Galilee in
Narragansett, Rhode Island, as well as ports in Rockland and Bath, Maine. Image
courtesy of the 3CRS team.
The need for solutions is dire, the researchers say. According to some of the latest research on sea level rise, risks to waterfront areas — which already face disproportionate climate-related risks — are set to grow in coming years.
For instance, by 2050 the region is likely to see between
1.1 and 1.8 feet of relative sea level rise and potentially 3 to 4.6 feet by
2100, inundating land and critical infrastructure. With these rising risks also
comes a growing threat to human health, which the new grant also focuses on.
“Extreme weather events such as hurricanes, extreme precipitation and heat waves impact community members' health through many different mechanisms,” said Katelyn Moretti, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Brown and co-investigator on the 3CRS team.
“Sometimes
the relationship between climate change and our health is clear, but other
times it is not as readily apparent. Coastal communities endure additional
risks from sea level rise and coastal flooding that can result in a myriad of
cascading secondary effects, like people being unable to find safe drinking
water or people with chronic illness losing access to their home medications or
electronic medical devices. Understanding these risks and others like them is
paramount to the development of effective adaptation and implementation of
solutions.”
The team first plans to delve into the unique challenges
faced by the four waterfront communities and then work closely with community
experts, stakeholders and decision-makers to come up with solutions or
approaches that are scalable and transferable beyond the locations. The idea is
to have the communities lead in terms of what they need, rather than scientists
coming in and dictating it, the researchers say in the proposal.
Potential solutions outlined by the research team include
building robust coastal observing systems, developing models for predicting
coastal hazards, and creating detailed roadmaps and adaptation plans that other
coastal communities can easily implement.
For instance, the project will include deployment of a novel tool called the New England-wide Coastal Hazards Analysis Modeling and Prediction System or NE-CHAMP, developed by Austin Becker, an associate professor at URI and a co-principal investigator on the grant.
The tool can
help coastal communities visualize and analyze the impacts of environmental
hazards such as flooding, hurricanes, storm surges, and sea level rise onto
their critical infrastructure such as generators, transformers and roads.
“By involving members of coastal communities in all stages of the project, the team hopes to increase awareness of rising sea level impacts on the health and property of vulnerable coastal communities throughout Rhode Island and Maine,” said Anabela Maria Resende da Maia, an associate professor at RIC and co-principal investigator on the 3CRS team.
“Our hope is
to empower local populations to enact change in their lifetime leading to
better socioeconomic outcomes related to housing value and their own health.”
The effort from the 3CRS team also features a rigorous educational and mentoring component as part of the grant. For this, they plan to work with six early career researchers and assistant professors, five postdoctoral researchers across the partner institutions, four graduate students and a number of undergraduates. The team also plans to develop education modules for students in grades six to 12.
“Investing in research infrastructure is a powerful catalyst for strengthening our nation's security, competitiveness, and fostering groundbreaking scientific advancements," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.
“By addressing these critical challenges, and engaging
with communities impacted by climate change, we have the potential to advance innovation
and promote economic stability and recovery in EPSCoR jurisdictions and
beyond.”
U.S. Senator Jack Reed, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee who brought Panchanathan to Rhode Island this spring to meet with faculty at Brown, URI, RIC and other research institutions, commended the almost 30 researchers from the region for coming together to work on this problem affecting coastal New England.
"This is a promising
project that can help decision-makers effectively strengthen resiliency in
vulnerable coastal areas," Reed said in a joint press release announcing
the grant with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
“As we race to lead the planet to safety from climate
change, we must address the urgent challenges facing coastal
communities,” said Whitehouse, who created the National Coastal
Resilience Fund to invest in resiliency efforts in Rhode Island and across
the country. “This federal funding will allow Rhode Island’s world-class
research institutions to collaborate on boosting resiliency in the Ocean State
for generations.”
The eight faculty members from Brown include scientists affiliated with the Warren Alpert Medical School, the School of Public Health, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, the Data Science Institute, the Population Studies and Training Center, and the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. Along with Di Lorenzo, they are Rachel Baker, Baylor Fox-Kemper, Karianne Bergen, Leslie Acton, Katelyn Moretti, Elizabeth Fussell and Luke Fairbanks.
Along with researchers from partner universities, the effort also includes nonprofit organization partners like the Center for Sea Rise Solutions led by Janelle Kellman.
Ten other teams were awarded grants as part of this latest round of EPSCoR funding.