CoPe RCN: Human Mobility in Response to Coastal Change

This Research Coordination Network (RCN) will leverage relationships with local communities to facilitate collaborations among the broader scientific enterprise. Practitioners, resource managers, and coastal stakeholders will coordinate with researchers to understand coastal change impacts on human mobility. Human mobility includes displacement, migration, and planned relocation. Human mobility has socioeconomic consequences and plays a role in building resilience. Sea level rise could force millions of U.S. residents from their homes by 2100, but researchers have paid relatively little attention to the impact of human mobility on the receiving communities. Communities may be unprepared for the projected influxes of people relocating due to coastal disasters. Critical knowledge gaps also exist in understanding how shifts in population patterns intersect with underlying socioeconomic, cultural, political, and environmental processes and resources. Resources and processes may either enable or hinder the ability of people to cope where they are, force them to move because support is lacking, and/or encourage relocation due to availability of resources in other regions. Modeled partially after the approach developed by key synthesis centers, this RCN will: 1) foster analysis and synthesis research on coastal change induced human mobility using existing data sets and legal and policy frameworks; 2) stimulate collaborative problem-solving across disciplines of natural and social sciences, and broaden participation in research and education by engaging individuals and stakeholders from U.S. coastal communities; and 3) identify and tailor existing products and/or generate usable tools and knowledge for building community resilience and adaptation. This award will create a locally relevant program that is national in scale by leveraging Sea Grant’s demonstrated ability to stimulate innovative use-inspired research. It will develop robust and sustainable networks of researchers, increase community participation in research, identify place-based research priorities, develop new education and outreach programs, and produce a nuanced understanding of the intersection of coastal change with the socioeconomic, environmental, political, and cultural needs of coastal communities in the U.S. 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. NSF Award ID: 2619130 | Program: 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,4082CYXXDB NSF TRUST FUND | Principal Investigator: Mona Behl | Institution: College of William & Mary Virginia Institute of Marine Science, GLOUCESTER POINT, VA | Award Amount: $45,720 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2619130 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2619130.html