Rutgers creates Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub to lead research on impact of climate hazards
Rutgers launched the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH), a new multi-university initiative that aims to analyze how climate hazards like rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes affect communities along coastlines, said Robert Kopp, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and director and principal investigator of the hub.
MACH, which officially launched in August, is a collaboration between 10 universities led out of Rutgers and is being funded by a $19.9 million National Science Foundation grant to be used over the next five years, according to a University announcement. The hub will particularly focus its research on communities in the tri-state area.
"We are looking at the regions composed of New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia, with the intention that that’s sort of a case study for broader application around the world," he said.
Kopp said MACH includes various research teams who analyze different aspects of climate change including community values during the climate crisis, local and household decision-making, changing climate hazards, exposure to climate change and economic impacts.
Taking this research into account, he said the hub will then devise strategies for coastline communities to adapt to these changing natural processes.
"A core part of the center of the hub is how do we take all this information from these different components and feed it into our decision analysis and feed that back into the communities and then get their feedback," Kopp said.
He said one challenge that MACH has encountered is ensuring that their scientific research takes into account the needs of individual communities. Kopp said that traditional research models separate scientific research from decision-making that affects stakeholders, which is ineffective in creating research that can be useful in real-world applications.
To engage the local population throughout the research process, the hub assembled a diverse Stakeholder Advisory Panel consisting of individuals from different community organizations to provide guidance on their research, he said.
Jeanne Herb, executive director of the Environmental Analysis and Communications Group at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and interim administrative director for MACH, said the hub will listen to residents, local leaders and businesses to draft strategies that address their needs.
In addition, she said MACH encourages "co-production" of climate solutions between researchers and community stakeholders, which addresses issues of equity.
"We have a strong focus on contributing to those communities that are most disproportionately affected by climate change, which are the same communities that have historically been underrepresented in planning and decision-making processes," Herb said. "Engagement of these underrepresented populations is a core design element of MACH and will drive the nature of our research and service to communities."
Additionally, Kopp said MACH has formed partnerships with community colleges throughout the studied region that will allow students to participate in research and have a voice in decisions that affect their communities.
Kopp said he hopes MACH will act as a model for how to reconcile scientific research and stakeholder engagement to combat climate change. He said that initiatives like MACH are important because the decisions that individuals make now will impact the planet for a long time.
"We’re making decisions that have a very long lifetime and we need to be making them cognizant of how the climate is changing, how sea level is changing and how all of those interact with human decisions," he said. "And we need to be making sure that communities feel like they have a voice in how that information gets used to shape the future of their communities."
