A COLLABORATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH FOR BUILDING FLOOD RESILIENT COMMUNITIES IN STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK

New York City (NYC) is increasingly vulnerable to floods from extreme weather and rising sea levels. Many coastal communities suffer from more frequent and devastating floods. Non-coastal communities have observed floods from extreme precipitation in recent years. This was evidenced by hurricane Sandy that destroyed infrastructure, property and resulted in loss of lives. In 2021, hurricanes Henri and Ida struck NYC within weeks of each other with unprecedented levels of rainfall that caused mortality and damage.

To prepare for future extreme weather and floods, we took a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to help communities to be more resilient to floods while promoting their social and economic developments.

We are an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students from CUNY with diverse backgrounds in Computer Science, Environmental Science, Mathematics, Physics, Urban Policy and Planning. Our team has been investigating how floods impact local communities in Staten Island. We collaborate with federal, state and city agencies as well as local communities and high schools.

We utilize the data from New York State Mesonet (a statewide weather network) and FloodNet (a citywide flood sensor network) to calibrate parameters used in our flood model. We utilize AI machine learning algorithms to evaluate risk and effectiveness of mitigation strategies.