| Affiliations: | DeBakey Executive Research Leadership Program |
| Project Leader: | Hope Hui Rising, Ph.D. hope.rising@tamu.edu Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning |
| Faculty Mentor: | |
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Meeting Times:
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Wednesday 5:00 to 6:00 PM |
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Team Size:
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3
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| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Co-authorship on a peer-review publication and becoming a full member of my research group should there be funding available
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Team Needs:
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Experience with 1) survey research and data analysis; 2) geographic information system (GIS) and spatial analysis; 3) statistical analysis programs, such as SPSS, AMOS, R, and SAS; 4) experience with structural equation modeling, path analysis, and power analysis |
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Description:
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This study examines how floodability influences approach and avoidance behaviors towards areas with different water levels and flood frequencies in Venice. Floodability is an emerging concept for addressing flood resilience as a paradigm shift from a resistance paradigm of “design against nature” towards a resilience paradigm of “design with nature” (La Loggia, Puleo, and Freni, 2020; Pasi, 2016). Adaptive water urbanism has mainly been discussed as localized adaptive management of floodwater through urban design features that are safe-to-fail, such as water plazas and floodable parks (Palazzo, 2019). Floodable development has become an increasing popular adaptive response to large-scale flooding for developers and municipalities seeking to balance economic development and flood adaptation despite the public health consequences of increased exposure to mold and cross-contamination of flood water by sewer and toxic wastes (Rising, 2017). However, little research has been conducted to understand the market viability for such amphibious real estate strategies and the impact of floodable development on people’s willingness to conduct normal activities during a flood event as business usual. A pilot survey with semi-structured questions was conducted with 35 participants conveniently sampled from residents and tourists in Venice. Mediation analysis indicates that the average water level experienced is significantly correlated with the anticipated flood water level that will make participants avoid tourist and/or business activities. The frequency at which participants experienced flooding without damage in the past is a partial mediator that significantly reduces the anticipated water level that triggers participants’ avoidance of normal activities in flooded areas. The findings suggest floodable developments may not be a viable market in areas with more intense and recurrent flooding due to a rising sea level similar to Venice because the tolerable flood water for conducting daily activities will continue to drop as the city floods more frequently. Floodable developments are likely to be abandoned in the long run as businesses and tourism cannot sustain themselves without people willing to adapt to flooding with the attitude of business as usual. Rather than encouraging floodable developments in flood-prone areas for short-term flood adaptation, municipalities faced with rising tides should consider proactive relocation as a more sustainable sea level rise adaptation approach by supporting the creation of relocation destinations on safer higher ground further inland. This study is the first that has investigated human perception of floodable developments to help inform sustainable adaptation strategies for sea level rise (Molinaroli, Guerzoni, & Suman, 2019). We will review the pilot survey results to finetune the survey instruments. The pilot version has two separate surveys for Italian and English Speakers. We will consolidate two surveys into one using the translation tool in Qualtrics and explore the potential to integrate Qualtrics with Social Pinpoint to enable responses to be georeferenced. Then, we will work with Qualtrics to sample 300 participants with the finetuned instrument. We will set up a facebook page and run social media campaigns targeting specific postal codes to help recruit more respondents based to make the sample as spatially stratified as possible. Then, we will conduct more comprehensive data analysis and publish the results for a peer-review journal. We will investigate how to design for climate migration as climate adaptation using the pilot data results from this research to inform a framework for selecting migration corridors for proactive relocation within the Mississippi River Basin and along the Gulf of Mexico to inform our sampling approach and survey instrument that will work for the conditions in various regions in the U.S. The intent is to generate a list of possible population centers and corresponding future relocation destinations as incentivized job centers to conduct the same survey in multiple regions to identify more generalizable inhibiting and motivating factors for market-based proactive relocation as climate adaptation. |