Resilience and Mitigation of Water-related Risks in Vulnerable Communities: Sharing Collaborative Approaches and Experiences
The main goal is to develop a community-driven, spatially informed framework for adaptive flood management that enhances resilience and flood risk adaptation for disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and Brazil by applying spatial analysis and environmental justice principles. Flooding is one of the most frequent hazards occurring globally. Impacts are seen on multiple scales, from household to catchment levels, and a large population can be exposed. For underserved communities that have inadequate stormwater and housing infrastructure, socio-spatial inequalities can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and create major impacts. Current literature on flooding adaptation addresses challenges in existing frameworks that aim for flooding mitigation; however, gaps still remain. Studies highlight how frameworks are usually developed with top- down approaches, with less or no public participation. The main objective of this project is to develop a collaborative adaptation framework for flood mitigation in vulnerable communities and foster their resilience and adaptability to face water-related hazards. This project expects to enhance the adaptation of flood-vulnerable communities located in Edmonston (United States) and Campina Grande-PB (Brazil) with the support of spatial mapping and facilitating engagement using community-driven methodologies. The interdisciplinary research team focuses on urban planning, civil and environmental engineering, environmental justice, climate change, remote sensing, and community-led research. This project is funded by CNPq (Brazil) and is a collaboration between Federal University of Campina Grande and SIRJ Lab.