The second Resilience Roundtable event was held at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, on April 11 & 12, 2019. The roundtable discussions focused on the following themes of: 1) Changing Ecosystems; 2) Climate and Health; 3) Policy and Politics of Resilience; 4) Flooding and the Built Environment; and 5) Emergency Management and Adaptation Equity. In addition, the Virginia Sea Grant Director Troy Hartley gave a keynote address about Team Science to encourage thinking about team building while tackling coastal resilience issues. Other presentations covered topics ranging from urban flooding and emergency response to the Virginia Department of Health's efforts to address the public health impacts of climate change that are emerging as a priority for the Commonwealth.
Some of the key findings from this Rotating Resilience Roundtable event include:
- There is a need to identify ways in which forests can contribute to flood risk reduction and how forest conservation can be advanced beyond the conventional land protection to support coastal ecological resilience;
- Research should address the knowledge gaps in sediment dynamics, channel flow and wind boundaries, marsh evolution, the role of submerged aquatic vegetation, changes in the tidal force, and marsh stabilization;
- Environmental processes in the region need to be monitored so as to provide localized parameters for modeling and prediction, while existing models should be validated and improved using the actual observations of flooding incidents;
- New unmanned aerial systems (UAS), Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and satellite observations and in situ sensors should also be exploited to improve ecosystem monitoring and prediction;
- There is a need for science on emerging issues in coastal zone such as accumulation of microplastics and pharmaceuticals in coastal ecosystem, public health issues related to heat stress and other climate change impacts, risks associated with exposure to hazardous materials mobilized by flooding, and many others;
- It is important to ensure that resilience strategies reflect contextual characteristics of communities, especially in the Hampton Roads area that is comprised of culturally, historically, and socioeconomically different neighborhoods and municipalities;
- The risk communication approaches should be designed to more effectively communicate the risk and changes to socially-diverse groups and at the same time build trust in the information and its source, and
- Researchers and stakeholders should work together to achieve adaptation equity via civic engagement and give special attention to vulnerable population to better understand how they perceive risk and their adaptation options.