Systems Engineering Approaches for Resilience to Coastal Hazards

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Posted on December 14, 2020 by Bret Webb

Bret Webb

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Coastal resilience is an active area of current research. However, many investigators are focusing their work on resilience of specific things or infrastructure categories. Such a singular focus, while often necessary, fails to account for interdependencies between the dependent components or groups within a coastal community on a barrier island. We believe that systems thinking, and a systems engineering approach, are needed in order to describe resilience to coastal hazards more completely and in a way that addresses the inherent uncertainty of our future climate. Some Federal agencies are increasingly turning to systems thinking and systems engineering approaches in their work. One relevant example is flood risk reduction, which in many cases is a complete flood risk system comprised of individual components (systems). We believe that a similar way of thinking is needed to better discern the interconnectivities that determine resilience of a barrier island community.

In this project we will develop, apply, and evaluate systems engineering approaches for the purpose of identifying resilient strategies for communities impacted by coastal hazards. Coastal communities are integrative systems containing social, natural, and technical components with unique interdependencies. In this case, the individual components include community decisions regarding strategies to improve resiliency (social facet), the physical response of the barrier island to future hazards (natural facet), and the infrastructure (e.g., transportation, utilities, etc.) that are necessary to maintain quality of life (technical facet). Community resilience to coastal hazards requires a comprehensive assessment of all three components and how they affect one another before, during, and after extreme events. The application of systems engineering principles provides an opportunity and a framework by which to consider the complex social, natural, and technical relationships and how they may enhance or diminish a community’s overall resilience to extreme events and long-term sea level rise. Dauphin Island, Alabama will serve as our application testbed for this research. Dauphin Island is a low-lying barrier island on the Alabama coast that is vulnerable to damage during minor to major tropical cyclones today. We anticipate that those impacts will only grow in time as sea levels rise, and as the frequency and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes increases. Through this project, we will uniquely and robustly analyze the social, natural, and technical facets from a systems approach in order to improve barrier island community resiliency in a changing climate.

Principal Investigator
Name: Dr. Bret Webb
Title: Professor, Dept. Civil, Coastal, and Environmental Engineering
Mailing Address: Univ. South Alabama, 150 Jaguar Drive, Shelby Hall 3142, Mobile, AL 36688
Phone Number: (251) 460-7507
Email Address: bwebb@southalabama.edu

Co-principal Investigator
Name: Dr. Stephanie M. Smallegan
Title: Assistant Professor, Dept. Civil, Coastal, and Environmental Engineering
Mailing Address: Univ. South Alabama, 150 Jaguar Drive, Shelby Hall 3142, Mobile, AL 36688
Phone Number: (251) 341-3998
Email Address: ssmallegan@southalabama.edu

 

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