Mecklenburg County Storm Water Engineering & Flood Mitigation Program Manager Tim Trautman explains the county’s buyout program to students in CRC researcher Dr. Gavin Smith’s “Natural Hazards and Climate Change” course during a trip to Charlotte on Nov. 9, 2018. Trautman explained the process by which half of an apartment complex east of downtown Charlotte was bought out and converted to a public park in the floodplain, increasing the value of some nearby homes. Photo by Josh Kastrinsky.

Institutionalizing the Graduate Certificate in Disaster Resilient Policy, Engineering and Design

Mecklenburg County Storm Water Engineering & Flood Mitigation Program Manager Tim Trautman explains the county’s buyout program to students in CRC researcher Dr. Gavin Smith’s “Natural Hazards and Climate Change” course during a trip to Charlotte on Nov. 9, 2018. Trautman explained the process by which half of an apartment complex east of downtown Charlotte was bought out and converted to a public park in the floodplain, increasing the value of some nearby homes. Photo by Josh Kastrinsky.

Education

Institutionalizing the Graduate Certificate in Disaster Resilient Policy, Engineering and Design

Summary

This project aims to institutionalize the Graduate Certificate Program in Disaster Resilient Policy, Engineering and Design at NC State through interdisciplinary partnerships with faculty as well as federal, state, local and international partners, members of the private sector and graduate students participating in the certificate program.

Key tasks designed to achieve this aim include: 1) conducting a design studio in a North Carolina community focused on identifying the best uses of open space post-buyout and development of resilient replacement housing that is located out of harm’s way (the studio course will be incorporated into the certificate program as a six-credit hour elective); and 2) continuing the analysis of the national survey of State Hazard Mitigation Officers and the comparative study of innovative housing acquisition programs in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia.

All course development and research activities and their associated deliverables will be undertaken in partnership with faculty and graduate students at NC State as well as practitioners at the federal, state, local and international level and the work incorporated into the graduate certificate program, including all core courses. For instance, the interdisciplinary design studio course will be incorporated into the certificate curricula and lessons derived from its development used in the future delivery of this course and other studio-based resilient design courses, thereby expanding the certificate’s elective course offerings.

Research undertaken in Year 6 will be used in student master’s projects, dissertations, and jointly developed journal articles and technical reports that will be provided to FEMA, state division of emergency management agencies, and local governments. Continued partnerships with New Zealand and Australia will serve to further ongoing research, to include international lesson- drawing tied to the development of new and emerging national hazard mitigation and disaster recovery policy in the U.S., New Zealand and Australia. It should be noted that the research literature highlights the underutilization of international lessons drawn from other countries to improve U.S. policy tied to resilience. Among the goals of this part of the Year 6 project is to apply lessons from an emerging New Zealand buyout policy associated with reforms to their Risk Management Act (New Directions for Resource Management in New Zealand: https://www.mfe.govt.nz/rmreview) and a state-level disaster resilience initiative in Queensland, Australia (Resilient Queensland 2018-2021) to the new US-based Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

As part of the continuation of Year 5 work, SHMOs will be contacted to identify innovative buyout examples in the US and stakeholders in New Zealand and the Queensland Reconstruction Authority will be contacted to identify innovative buyout programs in their respective countries and interviews will be conducted with buyout administrators using the interview instrument developed and applied in six US and New Zealand communities in Year 5.

Investigator

Dr. Gavin Smith
Dr. Gavin Smith
North Carolina State University

Other Research Participants/Partners

  • Co-PI: Andy Fox, Professor and University Faculty Scholar, Director, Coastal Dynamics Design Lab. Department of Landscape Architecture, North Carolina State University.
  • Travis Klondike, Research Associate Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Department of Landscape Architecture, North Carolina State University.
  • Thomas Barrie, AIA, Professor of Architecture, Director of Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Initiative. School of Architecture, North Carolina State University.
  • David Hill, AIA, Professor and Head of the School of Architecture, North Carolina State University.
  • Eric Letvin, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Mitigation. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  • State Hazard Mitigation Officers across the U.S.
  • Wendy Saunders, Natural Hazards Planner and Policy Researcher, GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.
  • Steve Dredge, Director, Meridian Urban, Brisbane, Australia.
  • Local government officials in the United States and abroad dealing with the acquisition of hazard-prone housing. North Carolina partners in Year 5 include Lumberton, Charlotte, and Fair Bluff, North Carolina. Overseas partners include GNS Science, Christchurch New Zealand, Sarah Bevan, University of Canterbury and Meridianurban and Grantham, Australia among others. Additional local partners in Year 6 will include governments drawn from across the United States, New Zealand, and Australia engaged in innovative buyout efforts.
  • Graduate student team assisting the PI and Co-PI, all of whom are pursuing the graduate certificate in Disaster Resilient Policy, Engineering and Design.