Thrust 4: Social Dimensions

In this thrust, we will study the question: how do we foster stakeholder capacity to anticipate and coordinate responses to the impacts of sea level rise? At present, there are four kinds of challenges to fostering regional resilience and adaptive capacity in Tampa, and in American urban coastal cities generally. This project creates the conditions for research on fundamental questions in all four of these interdependent domains:

1. Conceptual: How do we foster stakeholder capacity for anticipation and coordination of responses to SLR through constructing models as useful knowledge artifacts?
2. Ethical: How do we frame responsibility in relationship to an unfolding and uncertain future? How can we ensure inclusion of vulnerable communities in ways that do not reify and reproduce existing inequalities? How do we produce knowledge for stakeholders that is useful in action?
3. Organizational: How do we structure patterns of relating to accomplish transdisciplinary research around SLR?
4. Rhetorical: How do we craft artifacts and strategies for communication that hold broad authority?

In the course of generating useful knowledge for stakeholder partners of the project, the expectation is to provide a rich field of engagement for researchers into each of these domains.