Cities and towns need help to fend off climate-change impacts. This center offers expertise

PROVIDENCE – As the Earth continues to warm, coastal cities and towns in Rhode Island and other Northeast states are faced with impacts that include higher seas and more frequent extreme rainstorms. 

But many municipalities trying to tackle these problems and protect their citizens are finding that they lack the expertise to move forward. 

That’s where a new research hub being led by a Brown University oceanographer comes in.

The new center – created by Emanuele Di Lorenzo, a professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, in partnership with seven other faculty members at Brown as well as 21 researchers from the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems – aims to support local communities as they try to become more climate resilient. 

“In general, most of these communities are understaffed,” Di Lorenzo said. “They don’t even have a person to start the process.” 

The new hub would offer data sources for things like sea-level rise and flooding projections, planning tools and expertise in issues that staffers in traditional municipal planning offices don’t have. 

Rather than working in a fragmented way, cities and towns would be able to pool their knowledge through the center and hopefully work faster and more strategically on solutions, said Di Lorenzo. 

The hub would be known as 3CRS, which stands for Community-driven Coastal Climate Research and Solutions. It’s being created with a grant from the National Science Foundation that is expected to total $6 million over five years. The money is coming from the foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR, an initiative that supports science innovation. 

The center is working initially with four pilot communities, two in Rhode Island – the Port of Galilee in Narragansett and the Port of Providence – and two in Maine – Rockland and Bath. The hope is that they may hold lessons for other places. 

Seas in the Northeast are rising faster than the global average. Some areas could see nearly five feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. Low-lying coastal communities are especially vulnerable. In Rhode Island, they include neighborhoods in communities such as Warren, Newport, North Kingstown and Warwick. 

This isn’t the first time that Di Lorenzo has created a research hub that helps communities plan for climate impacts. Before he came to Brown last year, he directed the Ocean Science and Engineering program at Georgia Tech, where he founded what’s known as the Coastal Equity and Research Hub. The hub does research and training to help historically marginalized groups deal with climate hazards. 

He said the need for such support came together for him in conversations with Janelle Kellman, mayor of Sausalito, a city in California. Despite being an environmental lawyer, she didn’t know where to start in planning to address climate change, Di Lorenzo said. 

“She knew exactly what needed to be done for her waterfront community, but she didn’t know how to make it happen,” he said. “Imagine what it’s like in other communities.” 

A group founded by Kellman, the Center for Sea Level Rise Solutions, is working with the new hub. 

Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse applauded the creation of the project. 

“As we race to lead the planet to safety from climate change, we must address the urgent challenges facing coastal communities,” Whitehouse said in a statement. “This federal funding will allow Rhode Island’s world-class research institutions to collaborate on boosting resiliency in the Ocean State for generations.”