NSF R2I2: Co-Developing Mountains-to-Coast Resilience Solutions through Integrated Science and Practice

About This Grant

Multiple perspectives and collaborative input are required to envision transformative solutions to the complex interplay of cascading weather and environmental hazards. Yet civic institutions, scientists, and practitioners are often disconnected from decision-making processes and rarely have opportunities for mutual learning. This project aims to bridge the gap between geoscientists' understanding of natural hazard impacts and practitioners' ability to translate this knowledge into actionable solutions. Partnering with leaders from government, industry, and non-profits across North Carolina, the project will address local and regional environmental challenges through participatory workshops. The workshops will combine learning sessions on key topics with innovative community engagement activities grounded in real-world data and predictive scientific models. By convening individuals with lived experiences of hazard events and those in at-risk areas, the workshops will foster peer learning, scenario-based dialogue, and the co-creation of potential solutions. The project also seeks to catalyze broader public conversations about long-term futures by encouraging deliberation on trade-offs among development, conservation, and population trends, while acknowledging the difficult choices necessary to build system resilience. Findings and tools will be incorporated into student training and professional development for educators who work with the public, including museum staff and librarians. A persistent challenge facing resilience-building efforts stems from the lack of frameworks that integrate scientific expertise with on-the-ground operational and decision-making experience. This project’s integrative framework will advance the translation of Earth system science into actionable insights for local and regional practitioners while shaping a community-driven scientific agenda. This project proposes that a community-driven co-creation process can increase the perceived efficacy of collective solutions, build trust in science-based tools for guiding interventions, and facilitate cross-jurisdictional decision-making to address regional environmental challenges. Phase 1 will investigate how novel engagement strategies affect participants' understanding of complex, interconnected challenges and their perceived self-efficacy to implement co-developed solutions. Scientific modeling and analysis will inform the development of the workshops focused on North Carolina’s mountain and coastal regions, addressing challenges such as constrained infrastructure corridors, varied geologic and topographic conditions, dynamic land-use and land-cover changes, shifting population patterns, and varied landscape literacy. The resulting portfolio of solutions is expected to inform on-the-ground decision-making and contribute to regional resilience strategies. In Phase 2, the project aims to co-develop advanced analytics that respond in real-time to different intervention types and locations, enabling dynamic forecasting of potential outcomes, and supporting adaptive planning across scales. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.