Building seaport resilience for climate change adaptation [electronic resource] : stakeholder perceptions of the problems, impacts, and strategies

A growing body of research indicates that climate change is having and will continue to have a range of negative impacts on social-environmental systems. Consequently, attention is being given to reducing the vulnerability and increasing the resilience of these systems. This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of climate change adaptation, focusing on assessing potential impacts of storm events on seaport systems and strategies that can help prepare seaports and their stakeholders for the probability of a stormier future. Climate change increases the severity of storms and increases sea levels, making many seaports especially vulnerable to its effects. In addition to the fact that seaports are located in environmentally sensitive, high-risk locations, they also involve a complex network of stakeholders that depend on their functionality. An increasing body of literature suggests that, for planners to be effective in increasing resiliency of social-environmental systems to climate change-related events and other hazards, they must understand and incorporate the perceptions and concerns of the stakeholders in their assessment and planning processes; that is, potentially vulnerable populations are an essential component of disaster planning and policy making. This dissertation builds on and contributes to this body of literature as it evaluates seaport planning and policy with respect to climate change impacts, and examines the degree to which stakeholder concerns are considered in current planning processes that address storm impacts to ports. This analysis uses empirical evidence collected through a global survey and case studies of two particularly exposed ports, Gulfport (MS) and Providence (RI), to examine how port stakeholders such as port operators, municipal planners, port tenants, coastal managers, and others perceive storm impacts and vulnerability and how their planning and policy address these perceived concerns. Results suggest the following: 1) Globally, port planning practices do not yet address climate change and the resulting storm impacts, even though port managers recognize adapting to climate change as an emerging challenge; 2) Port stakeholders of Gulfport (MS) and Providence (RI) identified a wide range of direct damages, indirect costs, and intangible consequences of a hurricane hitting the port and these would result in costs that would be borne by all port stakeholders as well as society as a whole; 3) In Providence and Gulfport, plans and policies that address storm resilience for the ports did not include the concerns of many stakeholders; 4) Stakeholders in Gulfport and Providence, both internal and external to the port itself, identified a wide range of resilience strategies that could augment port resilience. These results indicate that all port stakeholders perceive increasing yet different risks from the impacts of increased storm activity, and that current planning processes are unlikely to address the full range of stakeholder concerns. Moreover, this research suggests that all stakeholders are poised to implement at least some strategies that would build resilience for the ports.

Advisor: Fischer Martin
Matson P. A. (Pamela A.) primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Caldwell Margaret
Mastrandrea Michael D.