Enabling urban residents to adapt to coastal flooding: Evidence from New York City neighborhoods.

The ocean is a bountiful resource for the urban centers along the northeastern coast of the United

States, but frequent coastal flooding poses a management problem that is becoming more

challenging as sea levels rise. Even in New York City (NYC), which is devoting billions of

dollars to coastal protections, densely populated areas will remain unprotected, and the protected

areas will remain at risk of flooding from extreme surge events. A gap in preparations for flood

risk is the capacity of residents in urban coastal neighborhoods to take adaptation actions to

protect their homes and their financial sustainability. Homeowners in coastal NYC have invested

substantial resources to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy, while rebuilding their homes as they were

before Sandy, increasing their vulnerability to future flooding. Awareness that flood risk is

increasing and understanding of the costs of adaptation actions relative to costs of not adapting

are low among residents.

The proposed project has two objectives: (1) build the capacity of coastal residents to use

existing resources to adapt to coastal flooding, (2) evaluate if, how, and for whom the proposed

approach contributes to adaptation compared to other initiatives. The second objective includes

assessing the value of flood risk predictions. The approach is a co-production process, in which

scientists, educators, community leaders, and residents in coastal NYC will collaborate through a

series of workshops to understand current and future flood risks, which are specific to the

communities and occur on time frames relevant to decision making. The participants will

identify adaptive actions and calculate the costs and benefits of those actions, taking into account

costs of not taking adaptation actions. The workshops will build on and broaden the impacts of

existing NYC and federal programs.

The evaluation will use methods, which are new in the study context, to rigorously assess the

benefits of the approach, enabling a credible cost benefit analysis. We will document how to

adapt the approach to different contexts based on evidence from diverse study neighborhoods.