From Sept. 12-14, Coastal Resilience Center (CRC) researchers and students in CRC education projects presented at the Carolinas Climate Resilience Conference, a biennial meeting convened to provide an opportunity for practitioners and academics to share information about climate-related tools, resources, experiences and activities in North and South Carolina.

• Ashton Rohmer, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) and a CRC fellow, presented on “Buy-In for Buyouts: Buyout Best Practices and Their Implications for Hazard Mitigation and Climate Change Adaptation.” The work was related to a trip taken by students to Kinston, N.C., which  saw major damage from Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

• Sierra Woodruff,  a PhD candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill, was a student in a CRC education program at UNC, a graduate certificate in natural hazards resilience, and was a Department of Homeland Security Office of University Programs Graduate Student Climate Preparedness Intern in the summer of 2014. Her research focuses on how planning can help communities preserve ecosystem services and reduce the impacts of climate change, and was the theme of her presentation. She also presented on integrating climate adaptation and hazard mitigation in the Eno-Haw region in North Carolina.

• Dr. Michelle Covi, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Ocean, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Old Dominion University (ODU), is a researcher on the CRC project “A Tool to Measure Community Stress to Support Disaster Resilience Planning and Stakeholder/End User Engagement”. Her presentation, “What Is a “Whole of Community” Approach to Planning for Adaptation?,” was one of three presentations focusing on sea-level rise and resilience in the Hampton Roads, Va., region. The final report for this project can be found on the ODU website.

To see all presentations, visit www.cisa.sc.edu/ccrc/speakers.html.

By Sierra C. Woodruff

Sierra C. Woodruff is a PhD candidate at University North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology. Her research focuses on how planning can help communities preserve ecosystem services and reduce the impacts of climate change. She was a student in a Coastal Resilience Center education program at UNC, a graduate certificate in natural hazards resilience, and was a Department of Homeland Security Office of University Programs Graduate Student Climate Preparedness Intern in the summer of 2014. The information discussed below is the basis of a paper published in Climatic Change, available at: http://rdcu.be/kIv2.

As a graduate student, there is a lot of uncertainty in my life: When will I finish my degree? Will I get a job? Where will it be?

Sierra Woodruff

We all confront uncertainty when we plan for the future. Our local governments are no different. They may ask: How will our population grow? What will be our future demand for water?

Today, local governments are also beginning to ask questions about climate change: How much will rainfall patterns change? When will the next drought be? How will it affect our drinking water supply?

The uncertainty in the magnitude and timing of climate change impacts complicates decisions our local governments make about how we should manage our natural resources, where development should occur and how we should design our physical infrastructure.

Researchers have developed multiple approaches to help local governments to discover, assess and address uncertainty in climate change impacts. These approaches typically emphasize the need to consider multiple scenarios of the future, to select strategies that provide benefits across several scenarios and to establish processes for learning and incorporating new information.

But do local governments actually use these approaches? For my dissertation, I aimed to answer this question by analyzing local climate change adaptation plans across the U.S. I found that while most plans recognize uncertainty as a challenge, very few use approaches that have been recommended by researchers to address that uncertainty.

To better understand how local governments are addressing uncertainty in climate change, I then conducted informant interviews in three communities: Boulder, Colo.; Denver and Salem, Mass.

Interviewees described multiple challenges that inhibited them from using existing tools to address uncertainty. For example, it can be difficult to change deeply embedded practices of planning for a single, best estimate of the future.

Interviewees also discussed multiple ways they are considering uncertainty. Most importantly, local governments are beginning to change the conversation about climate change to focus on their sensitivities. In other words, they are exploring how the things most valuable to their communities – drinking water, clean air, thriving economy and recreation – may be affected by climate change.

Woodruff presents on her research at the Carolinas Climate Resilience Conference in September.

Focusing on “what will happen?” may reinforce the practice of planning for one estimate of the future. By emphasizing how they are sensitive to the impacts of climate change, local governments are beginning to ask a new and more helpful question: “Given that one cannot predict the future, what actions that we can take today will serve us best in the future?”

This requires scientist to change how they provide information. Rather than assume that all local governments need is information about how climate may change, scientist need to engage with decision-makers and tailor information to decision-making context.

This approach may serve us all well as we plan for unknowable and uncertain futures. Before asking what might happen, we should first consider what is most valuable to us and what is necessary to maintain it long into the future.

Dr. Jennifer Horney

Dr. Jennifer Horney of Texas A&M University, whose Coastal Resilience Center (CRC) project focuses on tracking long-term disaster recovery, recently published an article on the website The Conversation about the reasons that people don’t evacuate in the face of imminent threats such as hurricanes. In the article, Dr. Horney examines why, in advance of Hurricane Matthew, residents in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina did not heed multiple warnings to evacuate. In South Carolina, for example, estimates indicate that about 35 percent of residents under evacuation orders actually left their homes (the rate in coastal areas like Charleston and Beaufort was closer to 50 percent).

To read the full article, visit http://ow.ly/Rs7J305lnUE.

In her work with the CRC, Dr. Horney collects long-term data on recovery to effectively improve community resilience to future disasters. These data are used to improve the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool, a web-based resource designed to aid local government stakeholders and other end users in tracking the progress and quality of post-disaster recovery.

By Colleen Durfee, Ashton Rohmer and Darien Williams

Charlotte-Mecklenburg County’s Storm Water Services office can trace its origins back to an ambitious set of projects from the early 1900s, including the draining of swamps and the straightening of creeks and streams, literally bending nature to the short-sighted will of the inhabitants who chose to settle atop it. The environment was a nuisance and obstacle to development, not an asset; in fact, some developers even built on top of streams, covering them with pavement and putting them out of sight. Vegetation removal was routinely conducted in flooded areas and the situation quickly morphed into a larger flooding problem that the Storm Water Services team battled until they exhausted the patience and resolve of the residents in the 1990s.

Students in Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence (CRC) Director Gavin Smith’s “Planning for Natural Hazards and Climate Change Adaptation” class learned about local government response to environmental issues during a field trip that included visits to the Land Use and Environmental Services Agency and to properties impacted by flooding around the city of Charlotte in Mecklenburg County, N.C. The city and county have combined resources for many of its services. The class is part of a CRC educational program, “Expanding Coastal Resilience Education at UNC-CH.”

UNC class “Planning for Natural Hazards and Climate Change Adaptation” takes a field trip to see Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Storm Water Services’ work on the Midtown Urban Greenway.
Photo by Ashton Rohmer

There were a series of especially bad floods in 1995 and 1997 that changed the tone of the office’s approach to the needs of the City. Residents and government practitioners alike were tired of grappling with regular flood events and turned to more proactive approaches for flood management and hazard mitigation. The County adopted a new mantra for flood management: “Floodplains must be allowed to flood.”

After a flood event in 2008 along Dunlavin Way (to the east of downtown Charlotte) the Storm Water Services office stood up their “Quick Buy” program, financed with local money from the “rainy day” fund, so that properties that did not qualify for assistance under FEMA could be paid to move out of the floodplain. Due to high demand for the program, Storm Water Services partnered with the County’s Parks and Recreation department to supplement the funds available so that more residents could participate; in all, $6 million was available through the Quick Buy program.
Photo by Ashton Rohmer

The Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners decided in 1996 that the use of creeks as a stormwater disposal method should be secondary to the preservation of creeks. This paradigm shift was paramount to the success of multiple projects, several of which were recently visited by students from UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP). A central theme in the observed projects was the mindful repurposing of residential and commercial land to resilient, safe and useful green spaces; since 2000, Storm Water Services has worked to acquire land through strategic buyouts of flood-damaged properties. Currently, the County operates a “rainy-day fund” (excuse the pun), extracted from storm water utility fees for future buyout programs and flood risk reduction; to date, more than 350 properties and hundreds of households have been moved from the floodplain.

A community garden in the Dunlavin neighborhood occupies some of the open space created by the County using their “rainy day” fund.
Photo by Ashton Rohmer

However, restoring streams and creeks to their natural courses does not alone ensure resilience to flooding. The County’s floodplain maps also needed to be updated, having not been touched since 1978. In updating the floodplain maps, the County used district comprehensive plans to base the 100-year floodplain on future, rather than current, land uses. Today, the 100-year floodplain reflects the land uses that have yet to take effect but likely will, given projected development patterns, mitigating the risk of future flood-prone properties as Charlotte and Mecklenburg County continue to grow. The floodplain maps are available to the public online and as a mobile application so property owners can assess their flood risk.

The Midtown Urban Greenway was the site of a former mall that covered up a section of Little Sugar Creek. Storm Water Services used $40 million for a daylighting and stream restoration project after buying out many of the businesses that had been built on top of the creek. Working with at least a dozen other agencies, Storm Water Services was able to engage with both the public and private sector to create this tremendous community asset.
Photo by Ashton Rohmer

Today, the greenways created by the buyout efforts are more than the manifestation of popular grassroots community demands for increased park and green space access. These projects allow species diversity and conservation, provide community garden space, improve water quality, and most notably for Storm Water Services, restore the natural creek and stream systems by letting the floodplains flood. In short: by restoring creeks instead of building over them or forcing their path, the office was able to reduce flood risk.

The Hidden Valley Ecological Garden, situated along a formally straightened section of Little Sugar Creek, was created in 2004 and was the first project implemented after the first wave of buyouts. After getting 100% participation from owners of flood prone properties in the primarily low-income Hidden Valley neighborhood, Storm Water Services restored 3,500 linear feet of stream and created 14 wetlands. Additionally, the Ecological Garden connects to a nearby environmental magnet school via a nature trail and serves as an outdoor learning laboratory.
Photo by Ashton Rohmer

Integral to the operations of the office is the nature of multi-purposed planning. The Storm Water Services office recognized that buyouts not only offered the opportunity to achieve several objectives, but that those same objectives would also create a multitude of community benefits. For example, a greenway or park doesn’t just serve recreational needs, but also raises property values, provides common public space and may reduce the flood risk of surrounding neighborhoods. This appeals not only to local organizations, but also to real estate developers, politicians and other active members of the community with interests in how public space is shaped. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County has learned from experience beyond just adapting to increased flood risk. By ensuring floodplains account for future land use patterns, the County stands as an example of innovative floodplain management that works to balance the built and natural environment in an effort to reduce harm to both.

Colleen Durfee, Ashton Rohmer and Darien Williams are graduate students in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They are also involved in work with the Coastal Resilience Center – see our Students page for more information. A version of this post originally appeared in Carolina Angles, a blog from the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of City and Regional Planning.

Welcome to the blog of the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (we’ll go by Coastal Resilience Center, or CRC, for short).  The CRC is a consortium of 22 projects across 12 states and Puerto Rico focusing on resilience of coastal communities and coastal infrastructure, studying the dynamics of coastal storms and educating the next generation of practitioners in the  coastal hazards field. You can find our more about us on our main website.

What you’ll find on this blog is news and perspectives from our researchers and directors; stories from students in our education projects; and occasional collections of good reading, jobs and other assorted items related to our fields of work. Also expect roundups of content on our Twitter and Facebook accounts, for those who don’t follow us daily (though you should!)

Thanks for reading.