For the better part of a decade, researchers and students from Drexel University’s College of Engineering have been collaborating with governmental and non-governmental partners in Camden, New Jersey and Philadelphia’s Eastwick neighborhood on the development of tools and strategies to reduce flooding.
Both communities have suffered different historical environmental injustices and both have been identified by the federal government as particularly vulnerable to flooding, but the design of flood risk reduction strategies requires the development of simulation tools that can compare the efficacy of alternative strategies under both historical and future climate conditions. Franco Montalto, PhD, a professor in the College of Engineering who leads Drexel’s Sustainable Water Resources Engineering Lab, and his team have been trying to solve these problems by working with residents and other local stakeholders both to identify vulnerabilities and to develop locally appropriate strategies that might reduce risks.
Through interviews, surveys, meetings and spending time with residents over a number of years, the team learned about the neighborhoods, and specifically the various social, ecological, economic, and health-related consequences of flooding. During this time, Montalto, his fellow researchers and students, grew to understand how they could bring their expertise to bear in providing the communities with some of the resources they needed to develop mitigation strategies and advocate for the funding to install them.
Teaming up with the local stormwater utility in Camden, the research team was able to install monitoring equipment to get a street-level view of when, where and how the neighborhoods flood. Using the data to calibrate a hydrologic and hydraulic model, Montalto’s team could then project frequency and severity of future flooding and evaluate the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies, including some first proposed by residents.
The team’s modeling tools were used to evaluate the effectiveness of a flood mitigation strategy along Harrison Avenue in Camden, which subsequently was awarded $20 million in funding for design and implementation. In Eastwick, the modeling simulations have been provided to a Technical Assistance Panel convened by the Urban Land Institute, and have been shared with a wide range of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders who are currently engaged in deep discussions about how to address flooding in that neighborhood as part of the Eastwick: From Recovery to Resilience Program.
Eastwick residents leveraged the data to draw support from the federal government as well. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is looking at the feasibility of building a levee along Cobbs Creek to protect the neighborhood from flooding and some residents have also been seeking funding, available under the Biden Administration’s infrastructure bill, to enable a “land swap” plan that would move some flood vulnerable residents to higher ground.
The team’s collaboration with the residents of Eastwick and Camden were recently documented in a film produced by Ben Kalina, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and assistant professor in Drexel’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.
They were also recognized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – a longtime funder of Montalto’s lab – as a model for successful, community-driven research to support climate resilience — earning Montalto and his collaborators in Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN) an opportunity to share best practices with Worchester Polytechnic Institute and as they begin similar projects in the Caribbean with a $499,836 NOAA grant.
Montalto’s group will continue working with the Eastwick and Camden residents as they build the support they need to implement their climate resilience plans and take steps to ensure the future of their communities.
To learn more about Eastwick’s recovery and resilience planning, visit: https://www.phila.gov/programs/eastwick-from-recovery-to-resilience/
To learn more about Camden’s water management initiatives, visit: http://www.ccmua.org/index.php/green-initiatives/green-infrastructure/camden-smart-initiative/
Reporters interested in speaking with Montalto should contact Britt Faulstick, executive director, media relations, bef29@drexel.edu or 215.895.2617.
