Project title: building an equity-oriented engagement framework for the floodwise communities process in the great lakes and south central regions competition: NOAA climate program office (CPO),…

Project title: building an equity-oriented engagement framework for the floodwise communities process in the great lakes and south central regions competition: NOAA climate program office (CPO), climate and societal interactions (CSI) division - bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL), NOAA-OAR-CPO-2023-2007771 competition #1 problem statement: the increasing severity and frequency of flooding in coastal communities due to climate change has laid bare the urgency of addressing the underlying dimensions of justice, equity, inclusion and diversity (jedi) that disproportionately impact frontline communities. IT has also emphasized the need to accelerate the CO-production and scaling up of decision support frameworks, such as vulnerability assessments (VAS), which build resilience to flooding. Yet, while VAS have proliferated, they seldom reflect frontline community perspectives and aspirations. In this proposal we seek to explore these interrelated issues, focusing particularly on if and how VAS meet frontline communities needs and lead to more equitable and just decision making outcomes. To do this, we will leverage resources and lessons learned from two experimental projects to CO-produce actionable stormwater VAS (floodwise communities, FWC) with city practitioners in two U.S. Coastal regions, the great lakes and south central. While these experiments met some of the decision needs of practitioners, they have fallen short of addressing: 1) the inequitable distribution of climate-related coastal hazards, such as storms, flooding, and sea level rise in frontline neighborhoods; and 2) the unjust systems that exclude impacted community members from adaptive stormwater management decisions and benefits. Proposed work: our main goal for this proposed work is to directly engage with four frontline communities in the great lakes and south central regions (two in each region) to explore CO-producing a community-centered stormwater vulnerability assessment (VA) framework. Specifically, we aim to address three objectives: 1) understanding with and from frontline communities their perspectives on the role of VAS in fostering their goals and exploring what are different ways to implement such VAS; 2) CO-developing and piloting a community-driven VA framework that integrates their priorities and perspectives, integrates dimensions of jedi, and can support both practitioners and communities decisions; and 3) identifying drivers and best practices for justice- and equity-oriented research and engagement to scale up the pilot framework(s). To accomplish this, we will organize and facilitate a series of two CO-production workshops in each community and use data from pre- and post-surveys, participant observation, and key informant interviews for evaluation. Relevance and broader impacts: the proposed project fits squarely within the BIL and competition 1 framework by piloting and evaluating a proposed improvement to an existing engagement method (floodwise communities) with four frontline coastal communities across two cap/risa regions. By adding two workshops to explore integrating community knowledge and perspectives in the FWC process, we aim not only to directly address local flooding and inundation through the completion of a stormwater VA, but also to develop a new framework that is transferable and scalable to communities in other regions. This will result in direct and indirect benefits for the four participating communities, such as selecting sites for adaptation projects, becoming eligible for new grants, or facilitating dialogue about justice and equity considerations in stormwater planning. The cap/risa network stands to benefit by learning how to begin to reconcile key tensions in adaptation planning and praxis: the need to deepen connection and extend participation to groups identifying as frontline.