Advancing Greater Miami’s Coastal Resilience through: Goals | Overview | Lessons | Community Engagement | People | Partners
Translating Science into Action for a More Resilient Miami-Dade Since 1980, the U.S. has incurred over $2.7 trillion in costs from climate-related disasters. This includes sea-level rise caused by global climate change, which poses significant and ongoing threats to coastal communities — home to about 40% of the nation's population. This project will promote researcher-community partnerships to co-develop a new decision-support toolkit that visualizes, tests, and prioritizes localized adaptation and mitigation strategies to enhance coastal resilience. It will advance the understanding of hazard risk modeling and resilience planning by using place-based participatory methods to incorporate local stakeholder knowledge and experiences in designing, conceptualizing, and evaluating potential solutions, which are essential for building resilient communities. The project will also offer training for graduate students and researchers, contributing to interdisciplinary STEM education and workforce development, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. The project is a collaboration between researchers at the Department of Geography and Sustainable Development, School of Architecture, Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, the College of Engineering, and the Climate Resilience Institute at the University of Miami. Goals | Overview | Lessons | Community Engagement | People | Partners
Most Prominent Concepts Within the Greater Miami Resilience Plans We have systematically reviewed 22 resilience plans in the Greater Miami region, including those from the South Florida Water Management District, Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, Miami-Dade County, City of Miami, Miami Beach, and other local Councils. The diagram features the most prominent concepts from across these plans, revealing the overarching sentiments and priorities of local and regional authorities. Clusters of Concepts Reveal Sectoral Orientation of the Resilience Plans While analyzing the 22 resilience plans in the Greater Miami region, we identified major clusters based on their core characteristics and associations. This interactive chart helps improve understanding of which sectors and themes (e.g., environment and climate, infrastructure and mobility, land and housing, health and equity, water and energy, governance) these plans focus on, as well as those that receive less emphasis. Key Strategies and Solutions Proposed through Resilience Plans We analyzed the range of strategies and solutions proposed in the resilience plans and ranked them based on frequency of occurrence. Given that drivers of resilience are complex, interconnected, and mutually reinforcing, we deconstruct the relationships and flows between resilience solutions. These resilience strategies encompass both nature-based solutions (e.g., expanding tree canopy, water conservation, restoring critical habitats, and beach nourishment) and re-engineering infrastructure systems (installing flood barriers, raising roads, and improving stormwater drainage). The dynamic chart reinforces that climate adaptation is not a linear process, and the complex dependencies and trade-offs involved across systems and strategies in resilience planning. Which Indicators Would be Useful to Visualize in the New Resilience Tool To address the knowledge gap in reconciling the diverse capabilities, goals, scope, and limitations of various resilience decision-support tools, we performed a critical assessment of 30 selected climate resilience tools in the U.S. We identified over 264 indicators across these tools and organized those into six domains (social, economic, environmental, institutional, infrastructure, and health). The Radar chart shows the percentage of indicators falling into each domain. It provides essential guidance for designing future resilience tools, outlining the types of indicators that should be prioritized while addressing existing knowledge gaps. Ensuring a Robust Decision-Support Capability on the Resilience Tool Analyzing the 30 selected climate resilience tools in the U.S., we are examining which features enhance user engagement and trust with resilience tools that could support collaborative decision-making. Assessment of existing tools on a range of decision-support criteria informs our design framework and the scope for innovation in the new resilience tool we are developing through this project. Goals | Overview | Lessons | Community Engagement | People | Partners
A workshop was held at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center on 26/9/2024 with the Miami-Dade County experts, enabling a discussion between leaders from the Divisions of Planning, Resilience, Transportation, Historic Preservation, Planning Research, and Zoning with the researchers and students involved in this project.
An interaction with the Human Geography students and faculty was organized at the Palmer Trinity School on April 23, 2025, enabling greater awareness and knowledge dissemination among the young learners in the broader community.
The PI, Dr. Sarbeswar Praharaj, shared the findings from this project at the World Urban Forum 2024 (WUF12) organized by the United Nations Human Settlement Program from 4-8 November 2024, in Cairo, Egypt.
We partnered with the MDC Office of Historic Preservation, providing hands-on training for graduate researchers and students on how climate resilience impacts cultural landscapes and how conservation practices and advocacy can help address these challenges.
The PI joined a premier Research and Academia Roundtable at the UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum 2024, as a member of Habitat UNI (UN-Habitat's network for university/research partners), and his contribution was focused on advancing urban climate resilience through interdisciplinary education and curricula.
We are making efforts to engage with key stakeholders and networks to share our findings from this project and gather valuable feedback. One such platform was the Smart City Expo Miami (23 – 25 September 2024), where the PI delivered a talk titled "Anticipating Change and Designing Future-Ready Communities."
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator
Graduate Research Assistant, Project Management
Research Assistant, Resilient Design
Graduate Research Assistant, Geospatial Technology
Graduate Research Assistant, Staheolder Engagement
Past Researchers and Interns Goals | Overview | Lessons | Community Engagement | People | Partners
This project is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (2435008) Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the investigator(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
