SCC-CIVIC-PG Track B: Hoomalu Halelea - Community-led Innovation for Integrated Flood Resilience

In April 2018, Haleleʻa, Kauaʻi, set a U.S. record for 24-hr rainfall (49.69 in), causing $19.7 million in losses. Over two years later, with families and businesses still recovering, the event offers an opportunity to enhance resilience of area communities and other places worldwide which are increasingly vulnerable to floods. The Hawaiian Islands comprise a model social-ecological system of diversity in culture, rainfall, and ecosystems.

Traditionally, Hawaiian food security was underpinned by oversight of water resources built across generations, but local knowledge alone can no longer encompass changes in rainfall, species invasion, and shifting land use. This proposal offers a model to restore capacity for local stewardship of waterways through scientific partnerships to enhance monitoring and communication tools.

This project will enhance social and ecological community resilience to increasing flood risk through: 1) Collaborative Research - Working with community members to integrate diverse methods and knowledge of watershed change to enhance local level stream management; 2) Piloting restoration and stream clearing; 3) Monitoring and Communication to improve availability of historical and real-time hydrometeorological data to understand flood hazards, and promote connectedness around extreme events; and 4) Community Education and Training offering educational materials to enhance holistic resilience to future disasters. Project partners include seven community non-profits, the county disaster planning and response agency, three university faculty specializing in water - from atmosphere to groundwater - and one social scientist native to the study area, along with a community lead experienced in indigenous stewardship.

Project goals and scope of research include interviews and focus groups with community members, piloting stream restoration through invasive species removal, installation of real-time weather stations to monitor rainfall, development of a communication web portal, and course for community education that will include in-person on-site learning and video instruction. Researchers and community members will together integrate elders’ knowledge, and historic stream data to generate research questions, place monitoring stations, and investigate hydrological responses during extreme rainfall events.

This project provides a model for collaboration between university scholars, local non-profits, and indigenous community members to enhance research, infrastructure, and communication; provide monitoring, observation capability and training opportunities and enhance local resilience to climate change. This proposal will also contribute to understanding of cultural, social and contextual aspects of resilience; model collaborative processes to generate and assess locally relevant indicators of resilience over time; while testing applications of hydrological science and communication technology to climate change adaptation and planning.

This project addresses Track B – Resilience to Natural Disasters for the CIVIC Innovation Challenge a collaboration with NSF and the Department of Homeland Security.

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.