SRS-RN Planning Grant: Integrated and Convergent Sea Level Adaptation for Urban and Rural Systems in the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Regions

The proposed planning grant will address the challenge of responding to sea level rise (SLR) in linked urban-rural systems located along the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Region (GCR). Urban and rural areas in the GCR are part of a geographical continuum composed of interdependent nodes connected by synergistic linkages, wherein the urban areas depend on the rural areas for natural resources and the rural areas depend on the urban areas for services.

SLR threatens the links that bind urban and rural communities together in the GCR. Compared with much of the world, the rate of SLR is quite high across much of the GCR and its landscape is a relatively low-lying coastal plain. Moreover, disadvantaged minority groups compose a large fraction of both the urban and rural population in this region, yielding a high degree of social vulnerability.

The typical SLR response strategies in the GCR are often practiced differentially across urban versus rural areas. The aim of this planning grant is to build a consolidated SLR adaptation strategy that enables urban and rural communities to collaboratively sustain the natural and physical infrastructure that links them together.

The proposed approach will be driven by convergent research of experts and by co-production of knowledge and ideas from stakeholder engagement. The project team will bring together an inclusive and diverse group of researchers, community leaders, and policy makers who do not normally interact. This group will create convergent research outputs and foster stakeholder relationships to build a collaborative Track 1 Sustainable Regional Systems Research Networks (SRS-RN) proposal.

The execution of this effort will follow a trajectory with three phases: (1) an on-line high-performance charrette will be used to coordinate partnering researchers and stakeholders, and assemble the foundations of the network, (2) an in-person charrette will be used to co-produce research priorities and hypotheses for the proposed SRS-RN, (3) a concentered expert workshop will integrate these efforts and synthesize the output products. This planning grant is a unique opportunity to (a) coalesce interdisciplinary teams, focus on the commonalities at the urban-rural linkages, (b) identify priorities, needs, and incentives of diverse stakeholders, (c) build knowledge and trust across these communities, and (d) formulate the research objectives, hypotheses, and methods for an innovative research network structure.

Network activities will focus on the inclusion of minority constituencies, groups, and institutions that have been historically excluded from the SLR response conversation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.