Opportunity Title:

Spatial and Temporal Components of Composite Risk in Port Communities

Research Area:

Other

EPA Lab/Center/Office:

National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL)

Location:

Research Triangle Park, NC

Duration:

9 - 12 months

Brief Summary:

Port communities are potentially exposed to multifocal risks as a result of their proximity to dense infrastructure, intense commerce and a dynamic environmental setting. Approaches are needed to aggregate and compare risks and to incorporate these considerations into urban design and port operations.

Opportunity Description:

Communities seeking to enhance their social, economic and environmental well-being (aka sustainability) must consider the sources, magnitude and impacts of chronic risks, whereas community plans for resilience must consider episodic or catastrophic risks. For the most part, the two views of risk have engendered separate bodies of research, but real-world communities do not have the luxury of considering them separately, as ports communities know well. Port communities, which often include disadvantaged and disproportionately impacted populations, are exposed to: air emissions from multi-model transportation and freight movement; releases of materials (often toxic) during storage, handling and processing; polluted waterways. Cumulative risk from all of these sources is challenging enough to assess and manage; compound those risks with a dynamic and uncertain future, and the challenge increases. Future trends for port communities include port expansions, shifts in trade (especially in response to shifts in the energy economy), and climate change (sea level rise, flooding and storm surges). These latter risks cannot be forecast with any certainty for a given time and/or location; stochastic modeling may enable us to include a likelihood element of the composite risk for any given community and/or region. This project will research approaches to integrate data and models to yield estimates of composite risk and explore how such characterizations may be used by communities to advance both sustainability and resilience.

Opportunities for Professional Development:

Given the challenging, interdisciplinary nature of the research, the intern will benefit from the diversity of expertise represented within EPA’s Office of Research and Development at this location. In particular, the co-location with the Environmental Atlas team will support spatial analysis of risk, vulnerabilities, and resilience from the built and natural environment; climate and energy modeling will support scenario development, and multi-risk programs (C-PORT and C-CAT) will support risk integration. Finally, the existing relationships with case study ports communities and counterpart federal, state and local organizations will enable the intern to realize immediate application of his/her research to real-world, high-impact issues.

Point of Contact or Mentor:

Betsy Smith (smith.betsy@epa.gov)