Towards a comprehensive assessment of coastal resilience: research at the intersection of hazards, vulnerability and risk decision making

The coastal region is confronted with increasing risk due to multiple factors such as climate change, urbanization, and the concentration of infrastructure. Under climate change, coastal hazards such as hurricanes and floods are expected to increase in intensity and frequency. This project first presents a conceptual framework of assessing coastal resilience by linking hazards, social vulnerability, and risk decision making in the coastal setting. It then presents two studies conducted in two coastal cities from the United States to illustrate this framework. Houston in Texas is selected as the location for the first study. Houston has experienced a few devastating floods in recent history. It is thus imperative to assess flood risk in this city through a comprehensive approach by considering both flood susceptibility and social vulnerability. This study first assesses flood susceptibility by applying Random Forest (RF) algorithm on remotely sensed data. It then combines flood susceptibility with social vulnerability to generate a comprehensive assessment of flood risk in Houston. New Orleans in Louisiana is selected as the location for the second study. This study first proposes a framework to study urban disaster resilience by closing the gap between municipal hazard mitigation plans and residents’ risk perceptions. Through survey research and policy analysis, this study identifies a gap between the municipal approach to climate change mitigation and the concern and expectation of actions the residents hold regarding the future effects of climate change. The study ends with recommending municipal hazard mitigation plans to reconsider risks of climate change and providing small-scale incentives to coastal residents in order to maximize resilience toward coastal hazards in the future.