Grover and Colleagues Receive NSF award to Conduct Research on Coastal Disaster Resilience & Mitigation
Posted: 10/22/2021 (CSDE in the News)
The NSF recently awarded a research grant to Michigan Technical University and CSDE Affiliate Himanshu Grover (Co-PI). The project brings together community partners, including a regional planning agency, county officials, and local officials from the Keweenaw Bay Indian community, with university researchers to understand the data gaps in addressing flooding and coastal disaster in two rural counties in Northern Michigan.
Flooding is a leading cause of natural disasters in the US. Flood hazard assessments are a critical tool used to support communities in determining how to mitigate flooding; however, data gaps in current flood hazard modeling tools render them inaccurate for rural communities. The proposed project’s vision is to develop methods that use remote sensing data resources and citizen engagement (crowdsourcing) to address current data gaps for improved flood hazard modeling and visualization that is transferable to other rural communities. The results of the project will expand the traditional frontiers of preparedness and resilience to natural disasters by drawing on the expertise and backgrounds of investigators working at the interface of geological engineering, civil engineering, computer science, marine engineering, urban planning, river and floodplain hydraulics, social science, and remote sensing. This project is part of the Civic Innovation Challenge, a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technology Office, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and Federal Emergency Management Agency.