Johnson awarded NSF CAREER grant for continued work with Louisiana Coastal Master Plan
The Master Plan consists of a large number of projects that are aimed at preserving and protecting the Louisiana coast, with an investment of roughly $50 billion.
Johnson, along with two of his students and colleagues at The Water Institute of the Gulf, estimate that with these investments in place the state of Louisiana will see a reduction in storm damage of approximately $15 billion annually.
These projects will help restore and maintain over 300 square miles of Louisiana's coastal wetlands. Of these projects, 12 are structural risk reduction projects that are estimated to reduce flood damage by $7.7 billion.
To read more about the Coastal Master Plan, please visit this link or for a more in-depth interview please check out episode #2 of our "Next Up!" podcast.
Johnson is the 2nd faculty member to earn an NSF CAREER in 2023, joining assistant professor Brandon Pitts who received the honor in April.
ABSTRACT
Many natural hazards (e.g., floods, heat waves, etc.) are expected to become more frequent and severe under climate change. However, there is still considerable uncertainty about the rate and extent of contributing factors like sea level rise and the resulting changes in the hazards themselves, such as increases in the average intensity of tropical cyclones. This uncertainty leaves policymakers unsure of what conditions to plan for, leading to the possibility of catastrophes if the future turns out to be more extreme than expected. On the other hand, preparing for a worst-case scenario that never comes to pass may require overinvestment of scarce resources that could have been allocated to other societal and economic concerns. Research also shows that socially vulnerable and marginalized communities bear a disproportionate share of risks associated with natural hazards. The goal of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant is to improve decision-makers' ability to manage risk from extreme events by (i) better quantifying natural hazards risks and (ii) identifying risk-informed, adaptive, and equitable management strategies.
While the tools and methods developed during this project will be applicable to multiple natural hazards, the scope and motivation of the project are to develop, validate, and apply them in the context of storm surge, riverine, and pluvial (i.e., rainfall) flooding in coastal Louisiana. Unique datasets and state-of-the-art modeling capabilities will be leveraged to better characterize the joint risk of flooding from these sources and predict how the hazard will evolve over time under shifting landscapes (e.g., land subsidence, erosion, changes to vegetation associated with saltwater intrusion) and climate change-related environmental forcings (e.g., sea level rise, changes to tropical cyclone characteristics). A multi-resolution, multi-model framework and artificial intelligence will permit estimation of compound flood hazard in a large ensemble of future scenarios, which will then be applied to an existing structure-level risk model used in Louisiana?s Coastal Master Plan. Adaptive risk management strategies that balance economic efficiency and equity, and which are robust to uncertainties and varied operational definitions of equity, will be identified using methods for decision-making under deep uncertainty (DMDU). Educational components of the project will focus on increasing the adoption of DMDU methods and risk analysis, and helping STEM students and practitioners to translate natural hazards research into real-world policy impact.
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