Abstract
This capstone design project seeks to improve the nurse retention rate at Martha Jefferson Hospital through non-economic incentives by designing an early learning facility providing childcare services to employees of the hospital. The deliverable for this project is a full construction design sheet set including site layout, grading, stormwater, demolition, erosion and sediment controls, and utilities.
It is not enough for land development projects to be technically correct in meeting requirements set by agencies such as the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). These projects, specifically when publicly funded, must also be scrutinized for fair distribution so that all citizens have an equitable share of the benefits provided by these infrastructures. The stormwater management aspect of land development especially has important social dimensions since the main goal of that infrastructure is to protect people and the environment from flooding, erosion, and water pollution. Existing literature identifies case studies in other communities where stormwater infrastructure is disproportionately located in wealthy white neighborhoods. When taking into account the fact that low-income or minority communities are generally at higher risk for the negative consequences of storm events, specifically flooding and water pollution, the lack of adequate stormwater best management practices (BMPs) is doubly inequitable since these are the exact issues they are engineered to mitigate. These communities end up being both at greater risk and underserved when compared to their more socioeconomically privileged counterparts.
This research in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) uses John Rawls’s Difference Principle as defined in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice as an ethical lens to assess the fairness of VDOT’s BMP distribution. The Difference Principle states economic inequalities are only permitted if those inequalities provide greater benefit to everyone.
To assess the fairness of VDOT’s stormwater BMP distribution, this research conducts two correlation analyses. The first analysis is between each Virginian city’s BMP count and its social vulnerability index (SVI) percentile, and the other between each city’s BMP count and a composite flood risk metric quantifying the habitable area located within a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) floodplain. ArcGIS Pro is used to overlay those political boundaries with the points indicating the location of VDOT’s BMP inventory and count the number of BMPs within each city. ArcGIS Pro is also used to create the flood risk metric by overlaying FEMA floodplains with land use data. The correlation between the distribution of VDOT BMPs and the distribution of social vulnerability and flood risk is used to analyze if the benefits of these BMPs are distributed among Virginia cities equitably according to risk.
The goal of this STS research project is to identify potential shortcomings in the implementation of VDOT-owned BMPs which could indicate a systemic disconnect between the goals of the state DEQ as they relate to stormwater management and the methods through which VDOT meets those goals. This research found no significant correlation between BMP count and SVI but did discover a significant correlation between BMP distribution flood risk. The City of Suffolk was a major outlier ranking first in total habitable area within a flood zone, yet it only has one VDOT BMP. When considered together, this capstone project and STS research elucidates how the differing needs of separate communities are met, or ignored, by public entities.
