Resilience, broadly, is how effectively and efficiently a system mitigates and subsequently recovers from disruption. Improving community resiliency in the face of environmental, natural, economic, and social disruptions is proving to be paramount to achieving long-term stability for the US.
USACE/ERDC has been working on developing methods and tools for resilience quantification in complex systems, including watershed resilience, for the Public good. Recent framework for resilience implementation (e.g., CISA’s Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework (IRPF), OSTP’s Grand Resilience Pathways, other national and international resilience – related tools need to be adjusted to communities in the Southeast Region who experience emergencies from flooding and coastal storm damage. This work builds upon projects that have been initiated in the Southeast Region; however, the focus here is on building resilience for low-capacity communities. Communities that have historically been underserved (low-capacity) fail to receive the necessary aid, despite often standing to benefit the most from resiliency-oriented community projects. Compared to well-resourced communities (high-capacity), low-capacity communities do not have the financial resources or personnel capital to spend on highly competitive proposals. The entrenched “top-down” funding model neglects low-capacity communities and manifests three major barriers preventing adequate risk mitigation and resiliency building: 1) program requirements that impede access and benefits, 2) limited investment in local and regional technical assistance, and 3) obstacles to developing collaborative projects and partnerships.
The objective of this program is to review resilience quantification methodology and processes of community engagement. Reconciling community needs and methodological gaps should result in methodological advancement. Extension from individual projects acting on specific communities to watershed and regional approaches is required. This work would focus on amplification from specific threat scenarios acting on individual vulnerabilities of specific communities toward multiple compounding threats acting at watershed-wide scale.
Deadlines:
Required SOI DUE: 07 August 2023.
Invited FULL PROPOSAL DUE: 23 August 2023
This opportunity is restricted to non-federal partners of the Piedmont-South Atlantic Coast Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU).