PAST PROJECTS
2021
Building Resilience in Vulnerable Older Adult Communities Facing Increased Exposure Risks to Wastewater Contamination from Flooding in Puerto Rico
Objective: The objective of this study is to gather data that will aid in building resilience in vulnerable populations against contamination risks posed by flooding. The underlying hypothesis is that even in vulnerable older adult communities exposed to natural disasters and resulting contamination, community-based risk reduction efforts can significantly decrease risk and increase the resilience of such populations especially when factors such as psychosocial vulnerabilities and the built environment are taken into consideration. Specifically, researchers are interested in improving the scientific understanding of how flooding results in elevated exposure risks to wastewater-related contaminants among older adults (Objective 1), determining what secondary/modifying psychosocial variables affect the vulnerability of older adults to risk posed by contaminant exposure (Objective 2), and learning how to build resilience in vulnerable communities with older adults by connecting the information gathered in the previous objectives (Objective 3).
Approach: The objectives will be met through a combination of (1) research about flooding, vulnerable communities in the disaster scenario, (2) surveys and interviews to identify the socioeconomic vulnerabilities, social capital, and disaster housing risk and exposure in the impacted community, and (3) community-based risk reduction to build resilience in the vulnerable, older adult population within the impacted community. Specifically, the municipality of Loíza in Puerto Rico is chosen as the testbed for this project because of its susceptibility to flooding and its large population of older adults.
Expected Results: The outputs of this project will provide spatial information on contamination, psychosocial, and infrastructure vulnerabilities to risks associated with flooding within the Loíza community, which will then be used to plan interventions for increasing resilience in the vulnerable, older adult populations. One key outcome of this work is an enhanced understanding of the connections between physical exposure to contamination from natural disasters, risks posed by psychosocial systems and the built environment, and effective methods for improving resilience in vulnerable communities.
2019
Students at the University of Utah from College of Architecture + Planning, Environmental Studies and Engineering spent the 2019 Spring Break learning about disaster recovery and resilience in Puerto Rico after the 2017 Hurricane Maria. During the trip, we introduced students to different dimensions of disaster recovery as well how disaster resilience intersects with community revitalization, sustainability, and environmental justice.
First, the students visited Comerío, a low-income mountain community that suffered significant flood, wind and landslide damage. Students heard stories of municipal workers who worked tirelessly to help others despite having lost homes themselves. They met an elderly widow who had lost her roof to the hurricane and lived under a tarp. They also saw the new disaster-resilient home that the Chicago-based Puerto Rico Agenda and the municipality built for her. The students then visited an Agenda-funded “resilience center”, which is designed to act as a hyper-local relief and aid center in times of disaster. Here the students led a participatory disaster impact and recovery asset mapping exercise with local residents. Our students are now transferring these insights into a report for the community to use during recovery planning. Students also heard about the community’s aspirations to restore a defunct hydroelectric plant, pursue ecotourism and other sustainability measures while recovering.
Next, students visited the unique El Yunque National Forest to experience post-disaster natural resource recovery. Students visited the make-shift visitor center that has had to operate outside the park since the disaster and learned about the impact on park facilities, trails and the many scientific experiments in-progress. They took a tour of the forest to see how the disaster has limited visitor experience, and to understand how long the road to recovery is.
Next, the students met students and faculty of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras in San Juan to hear about recovery from an institutional perspective. They followed this up with a visit to Urban, Community and Business Action Center of Río Piedras (CAUCE) which works to revitalize the economically depressed Rio Piedras neighborhood and which played a central role in coordinating local post-disaster relief and response. Finally, the students visited the World Habitat Award-winning Corporación ENLACE del Caño Martin Peña. ENLACE represents a low-income canal community that has self-organized to restore its socioeconomic and natural environments. The community has combined disaster resilience and sustainability by undertaking a community-engaged relocation project that will move residents out of the floodplain and into the same community, while also enabling ecological restoration of the canal. The visit provided students with a community-based, socially just model for sustainability and resilience planning.
Over the course of a week, the students met with many stakeholders taking many diverse recovery actions and in diverse contexts. Through stories, first-hand observation and discussions, our students learned about how dynamic, complex, multi-dimensional, and emotional disaster recovery is. They also learned about the human capacity to rise above challenges, take collective action and build community resilience in the face of disasters.