Quantifying and Designing Infrastructure for Nonstationary Flood Risks; Evaluating Environmental, Social, and Economic Factors in Flood Mitigation Strategies for Norfolk, Virginia

Both of my STS thesis and my technical topic revolve around the ever increasing need for new flood infrastructure across the United States, particularly in coastal areas such as Norfolk, Virginia. However, while everyone acknowledges how climate change and rising sea levels indicate the need for requirements, choosing the optimal infrastructure plan to enact is a much more difficult task. There are a variety of factors that must be considered, which is why the Hampton Roads region has failed to successfully enact a new infrastructure plan. My STS thesis is a case study of Norfolk and the exact circumstances surrounding previous proposed plans to identify the exact other factors that have prevented the local government from successfully implementing new flood infrastructure in the city. Meanwhile, my technical capstone project focuses on flooding concerns in Charlottesville from a quantitative point of view, using simulation modeling to predict how different infrastructure options will actually perform. Initially, we were going to model Norfolk as well, but circumstances required us to switch to Charlottesville. However, the two topics are still very much related as they both address the effectiveness of flood infrastructure, both from a quantitative perspective and the social, economic, and cultural factors that play a major role in policy making.
In recent years, climate change has led to a rise in intense precipitation events, presenting the need for efficient and cost-effective flood management infrastructure. In Charlottesville, VA, one key area identified for improvement is Meadow Creek. My technical topic examines different infrastructure options for flood management in Meadow Creek under various climate change scenarios. This analysis is carried out by optimizing infrastructure designs with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model under uncertain future conditions captured by climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6. The optimization seeks to minimize cost and runoff volume while maximizing cobenefits. My findings provide a set of non-dominated green infrastructure solutions and provide a methodology for selecting a recommended compromise solution. This analysis contributes to my goal of addressing flood risks and long-term sustainability in the Charlottesville area.
As previously mentioned, the focus on my STS topic was an in-depth case study into Norfolk, Virginia, to identify the reasons behind the government’s failures to successfully implement new flood infrastructure. To do this, I utilized the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework to identify the different stakeholders at play and the specific needs to each group. Here, I identified three primary stakeholder groups: the white population, the minority/black population, and the local government. Throughout the paper, I explain how previous gentrification and race laws have led to different areas of the city being predominately one race, which is the main point of contention in most previous plans. Most notably, the recent proposed plan sponsored by the US Army Corps of Engineers, failed to provide the minority dominated, and typically poorer areas with the same protections and resources in their sea wall plan, creating much public outrage and leading to the eventual postponement of the project. My STS thesis concludes by acknowledging the failures of the local government to equitably protect all members of the community as well as their reliance on faulty, inaccurate flood risk data to recommend a potential path forward, as well as any additional policies that may need to be enacted to prevent negative consequences such as continued gentrification of poorer, minority neighborhoods.
I believe that working on my technical report and my STS paper at the same time was extremely beneficial for my complete understanding of all of the factors that must be considered to address the growing flood concerns. While both projects focused on slightly different locations (Charlottesville and Norfolk), the overall concepts of both projects can easily be applied to the other. In essence, these two projects are basically just two parts of the same project as any new flood infrastructure policies would require both facets to ensure an optimal strategy is selected. The technical optimization results are extremely helpful in determining which solutions are actually effective in reducing flooding while also considering outside factors such as cost or potential benefits reaped, which is, in the end, the primary goal from new infrastructure. However, merely using these quantitative values to make a decision ignores the crucial fact that these decisions inevitably impact people and their livelihoods, which really cannot be simplified down to a single number. Therefore, case studies like my STS thesis are required to understand the less tangible factors and impacts regarding these infrastructure policies, allowing everything to be used in tandem to pick the best solution possible.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering

Technical Advisor: Julianne Quinn

STS Advisor: MC Forelle

Technical Team Members: Simrat Saini, Noah Simsic, Lachlan Murphy, Justin Zheng