Photo credit: Gulf of Maine Research Institute (Photo is permitted for one-time use in association with 3crs.org only)
Photo credit: Mary Caitlyn Larson
Photo credit: Gulf of Maine Research Institute (Photo is permitted for one-time use in association with 3crs.org only)
Welcome to the New England Community-Driven Coastal Climate Research and Solutions (3CRS) Hub!
About the Hub
Low-lying, working waterfront communities throughout New England are disproportionately vulnerable to projected increases in the frequency and intensity of flooding and coastal storms. These pose an existential threat to these communities, jeopardizing livelihoods, ocean-reliant economies, critical infrastructure, community health and wellbeing, and peoples’ heritage.
By collaborating with four initial pilot communities of Port of Providence (RI), Port of Galilee (RI), Rockland (ME), and Bath (ME) over five years (2023-2028) with the goal of expanding longer term across New England to empower broader community climate resilience, the Community-Driven Coastal Climate Research & Solutions (3CRS) hub aims to co-develop processes, expert networks, data streams, local relationships and knowledge needed to expand the capacity of working waterfront communities to become more climate resilient.
What will this project do?
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Identify strengths, vulnerabilities, and information gaps related to climate resilience in each community;
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Co-develop tools, training, and capacity to meet community evolving needs around climate resilience;
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Highlight and center community narratives and visions of resilience to inform future policies and projects.
How might this benefit your community?
(1) Shape your own resilient future
The 3CRS Hub will work with communities to develop and leverage resources, knowledge, and relationships to control, shape, and envision their future. Through tailored products such as community-driven resilience metrics and the collective visioning of a resilient future, communities can advocate, develop, and implement planning strategies that lead to a more resilient and healthy environment.
(2) Increase access to decision support tools, knowledge, and data
Ensuring everyone can access and interpret the decision support tools, knowledge, and localized environmental data they need is critical for informed decision-making. We will partner with communities to build the expertise needed to apply decision making tools and data to their unique circumstances, for example by using AI models to allow community members to access coastal resilience information in an easy way.
(3) Hyper-local data and planning tools for more informed decision making
We’ll work with communities to develop new customized climate resilience data sources and tools, such as sea level rise models and flood sensors. These tools will incorporate detailed information at a granular level to better reflect hyper-local needs and characteristics for better climate resilience planning.
Research Themes and Teams
The project is organized to advance eight research themes (RT) through three phases
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RT 1: Community Engagement
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RT 2: Community Knowledge Collective (CKC)
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RT 3: Dynamic Resilience Metrics
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RT 4: Coastal Climate Information System
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RT 5: Coastal Hazards Analysis, Modeling, and Prediction System (CHAMP)
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RT 6: Hyper-local Sensor Network
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RT 7: Workforce Development
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RT 8: Coastal Resilience AI
Links to Research Themes COMING SOON
3CRS Hub Phases
Phase 1: People & Data
To understand and help address the resilience challenges faced by communities, 3CRS partners with individuals and organizations to:
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Establish processes to co-produce the data & knowledge necessary for developing strategies and tools for climate resilience. (RT1)
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Co-develop a Community Knowledge Collective (CKC) that integrated people’s lived experiences and visions for their future resilience (e.g. narratives, storylines). (RT2)
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Co-design metrics to measure the change in resilience over time across the dimensions of human well-being (e.g. health, habitability, safety). (RT3)
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Co-deploy a hyperlocal coastal sensory network to monitor water level, temperature, and air quality at the scales where communities need information and make decisions. (RT6)
Phase 2: Data & Knowledge Synthesis
Using the data, knowledge, and CKC gathered during Phase 1, 3CRS will use a hierarchy of dynamical and data-driven modeling approaches to:
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Expand the functionality and geographic range of the New England Coastal Hazards, Analysis, Modeling, & Prediction (NE-CHAMP) system, as a planning tool for coastal resilience. (RT5)
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Downscale climate projections to spatial scales and impact metrics that are relevant to individual communities' resilience planning. (RT4)
Phase 3: People & Solutions
The synthesis products from Phase 2 will support the deployment of solutions for coastal climate resilience, which include:
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Establish and grow a network of community stakeholders and multi-sector experts, supported by AI dashboards, to improve equitable access to resources for coastal climate resilience planning. (RT1 & RT8)
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Create past and future community adaptation storylines to promote shared action and understanding. (RT2)
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Document processes that are most effective for understanding, planning and managing resilience solutions, and share these processes with other communities. (RT1 & RT2)
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Provide expert capacity training and workforce development training for students in grades 6-12. (RT7)
3CRS Team
3CRS Hub Partners
3CRS is supported by the National Science Foundation under EPSCoR RII Track-2 FEC: Community-Driven Coastal Climate Research & Solutions for the Resilience of New England Coastal Populations, Award #2316271.