Resilient Bay Area Brochure

Resilient Bay Area INSPIRING A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO SEA LEVEL RISE

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Our Vision In 2017, Stanford faculty in geophysics, engineering, and public policy created a new project-based, service-learning course focused on the regional issues brought on by climate change. Students formed interdisciplinary teams and worked alongside community members to identify critical vulnerabilities in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties and nurture participatory solutions that could strengthen the Bay Area’s resilience to sea level rise.

What emerged was an innovative program model: a way to bring together local residents, public officials, and experts dedicated to innovative, practical responses to sea level rise and its related challenges.

It’s also a model for how Stanford can live out its public mission. Students today crave hands-on learning and coursework tackling urgent, real-world problems.

Local governments want access to high-quality scientific research. And the Bay Area needs new problem-solving platforms to convene cities, counties, and creative thinkers across industries and academic disciplines. Read on for more on the project’s discoveries and next steps.

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Our Story T hese days, we’re increasingly confronted by news coverage of phenomena connected to climate change, from relentless wildfires across the American West to floods threatening life on islands around the world. Taking in these portraits of our “new normal”, we feel an urgent need to do something about it, but the enormity of the problem and the rhetoric surrounding it leave us feeling overwhelmed. For policymakers, tasked with many competing priorities and often at the mercy of voters’ demands, it’s all too easy to kick the can down the road.

But in the eco-conscious San Francisco Bay Area, things could be different. Here, climate change is already a near-term concern as the bay’s rising waters encroach on natural habitats, popular tourist destina-

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tions, and low-lying neighborhoods and infrastructure. Between now and 2040, more frequent floods are expected to close transit routes, cut the power supply, and damage dozens of schools, utilities, and health care facilities up and down the peninsula.

The region has a narrowing window of time to prepare for what’s to come, but even here it’s difficult to approach sea level rise as an actionable issue rather than a series of apocalyptic what-ifs. Just as with other urgent issues like homelessness and the housing crisis, attempts to coordinate a regional adaptation strategy are hindered by regulatory dilemmas and misaligned incentives.

Still, as a science and technology hub with a deep commitment to the environment,

the Bay Area is positioned to be a laboratory for ambitious but workable solutions.

With the right approach to marshal the area’s innovators and get governments at all levels working together, this could be the place where “Somebody do something!” becomes “Let’s get started.” When that happens, coastal communities around the world will take notice.

the Sustainable Urban Systems Initiative, the Bill Lane Center for the American West, and the Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative. Project co-founder Derek Ouyang, a lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, says, “The interdisciplinary nature of the course allowed students to understand flood risk as a systems-scale problem. The breadth and depth of risk is affected by so many more drivers than most people expect, but this also means that opportunities to mitigate risk can come from so many creative places.”

After mastering the methodologies involved in risk analysis, students divided into teams assigned to bayfront cities from Burlingame to San Jose. Each team paired with local partners representing grassroots community groups, larger nonprofits, city and county governments, and regional agencies like the Association of Bay Area Governments, with the goal of co-designing interventions to equip communities for a future of frequent floods.

“The idea was to start an open-ended dialogue that would identify critical research questions and lead to the joint creation of new knowledge,” says Jenny Suckale, assistant professor of geophysics and cofounder of the project. In part because academia stands as a third party to existing frameworks linking the public and private sectors, this approach provides the flexibility to ask broader questions and redefine the problems at hand.

That partnership model sounds intuitive for a problem that demands both sophisticated scientific tools and expert knowledge of the politics and public policy landscape. But it represents a relatively new way for public officials and academic researchers to learn from one another. For

Rising to the Challenge So how can sea level rise be wrangled into something Bay Area policymakers can easily understand and act on? What’s needed is a way to vividly illustrate the region’s future if it fails to adapt—namely, a tool to quantify risks and pinpoint vulnerabilities, allowing for progress because it embraces the uncertainty inherent in climate change scenarios. A tool like that can act as a catalyst for brainstorming and collaboration among municipal and county governments, industry leaders, and community-based organizations.

Recognizing the unique role of the university in meeting this need, a group of Stanford faculty joined forces to support the emerging movement to prepare the Bay Area for sea level rise. Many across campus were already committed to the issue, and they were eager to tackle it with a new initiative integrating their fields: geophysics, civil and environmental engineering, and public policy.

The centerpiece was a year-long course that aimed to create a new tool for shaping policies promoting coastal resilience. The teaching team comprised six Stanford six Stanford faculty members and instructors drawn from the Department of Geophysics,

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the academics, it’s a meaningful way to engage in public service, not to mention an eye-opening education in what it takes to translate exciting ideas into real-world solutions. For the public officials, who face constraints of time, resources, and standard procedures, it’s an empowering opportunity to push past these boundaries and be more innovative. And being included in the process from the beginning means the final product won’t just land on the shelf of archived reports; it’ll actually inform and inspire the decisions they make in their day-to-day work.

s the Stanford team explored this human landscape and the many ways recurrent floods will disrupt it, it quickly became clear that adaptation strategies should focus on people, not just property.

For example, commercial buildings account for most of the financial losses, since they’re more expensive to rebuild and tend to contain valuable products like computers and office equipment. But approximately 88 percent of the buildings exposed to flood hazard are residential, the Stanford team found, and many of the people living in them can’t afford to repair the damage to their homes and vehicles. So while it’s tempting to focus on the big losses to hotels and other high-profile businesses, vulnerable populations deserve greater attention if adaptation planning is to be done with equity in mind.

Delving into data on local demographics, discretionary income and participation in the National Flood Insurance Program, the

A Wider Lens Thanks in part to the engagement of these local partners, the project’s risk assessment painted a richly detailed picture, one that goes beyond traditional estimates of property damage to explore how sea level rise will affect the rhythms of daily life. Cataclysmic storms may loom large in the public mind, but it’s the steady creep of smaller, more frequent floods that will ultimately force changes to Bay Area life as we know it.

Consider San Mateo County as an illustrative example. It is one of six counties in the United States with more than 100,000 people living in an area expecting 3 feet of sea level rise. Its population grew by about 50,000 over the past five years, and its workforce is almost half a million people. In San Mateo County alone, the Stanford class found, flooding will result in losses on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

As a science and technology hub with a deep commitment to the environment, the Bay Area is positioned to be a laboratory for ambitious but workable solutions.

team found that in certain counties, low-income groups will suffer disproportionate losses, and as a whole they will struggle to cope with the aftermath of floods. Language barriers could be one reason many of them will be caught unprepared. In the areas most exposed to flood damage, some

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57 percent of residents speak a foreign language at home, and early warning systems are limited to English. And among households in the lowest income brackets, the out-of-pocket costs of repairs are likely to be greater than their annual disposable income. That amounts to an estimated 8,000 households that may either give up life necessities in order to cover the repairs, or forgo repairs and live in potentially hazardous, damaged homes.

And the damage to a family’s home is just the first in a cascade of potential losses, as the Stanford team’s analysis reminds us.

Several feet of flooding could put the family car out of commission, which could mean an inability to get to work, take children to school or daycare, and stock household supplies. Beyond buildings and property, these “cascade effects” become even more complex and far-reaching. To take just one example, people commute from all over

the Bay Area to work in San Mateo County, but with flooding across major highways, roads, and public transit centers, they can’t show up to work on time or at all. For large employers like school districts and hospitals, a delayed or absent workforce will affect the entire community.

While the Stanford team’s analysis may seem daunting, its wide lens can have an energizing effect on policymakers. By putting measures to aspects of the problem that previously have been ignored or treated as unknowns, the project is illuminating the interconnectedness of the Bay Area’s communities and spurring much-needed coordination. This is what policymakers need to transform sea-level rise from a planet-level threat to a regional challenge—one that is solvable with a spark of imagination and a network of partners committed to strengthening the future of the bay.

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Darcy Smith: THE VIEW FROM CITY HALL

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s a Stanford undergrad majoring in earth systems, Darcy Smith found the beginnings of a future career in a service-learning course that partnered her class with local government in Half Moon Bay. As a principal planner and zoning administrator for San Mateo, she aimed to do the same for today’s Stanford students.

As a partner to Stanford’s Resilient Bay Area class, she presents the local government perspective to students and offers feedback as they create their end-of-term reports. She sees her involvement as a way to show the students a potential career path, and to demonstrate how gratifying it can be to deliver scientific expertise in public service.

And in her own work, the project’s findings have been invigorating. So far, Darcy says, climate change modeling has focused on what can be most readily quantified, which leaves out the significant impacts storms can have on homes, utilities, schools, and employment centers. The Stanford risk assessment model, she says, provides a practical tool for local governments and business leaders to ask the right questions: “Given what we know, what policies do we need to start shifting to ensure the greatest protection of property and life, as well as to ensure that insurance coverage is adequate?” It takes an adaptive modeling framework like this to help people wrap their minds around climate change and translate their concern

into local action.

And it isn’t just the project’s findings that can help local leaders overcome some of the challenges in coordinating a regional response to sea-level rise. The partnership model that produced the findings can be an inspiration in itself. Darcy especially valued the extended dialogue she and her colleagues had with the Stanford group.

“Cities will hire consultants, but the collaboration tends to be lacking.” As Darcy points out, local governments usually can’t fund state-of-the-art research themselves. And the Stanford students and faculty have the 7

passion and longer-term commitment to tackle the issues in greater depth than paid consultants, who don’t often engage in this kind of dynamic collaboration.

Darcy hopes that the project’s insights and partnership model will help counties coordinate, especially in sharing strategies to serve people who will have greater

low-income families, that kind of political solution isn’t as readily available.

The project also confirms Darcy’s belief that a key step is seeking greater involvement from insurance companies, which now operate under models that may not capture the extent of claims and costs of rebuilding flooded residences. Are the areas most prone to flood damage classified accurately in terms of appraisals? Fortunately, this is an ideal moment The Stanford risk assessment model to capture their attenprovides a practical tool for local tion, she says, given recent disasters in Housgovernments and business leaders ton, Santa Rosa, and to ask the right questions.

New Orleans, and the subsequent political wrangling over rebuilding costs. If insurance companies hear the difficulty recovering from flood events. message, they can in turn use their clout “City boundaries are invisible to most of to galvanize local policymakers. the population, and there’s no need for one Clearly, the Bay Area is rich in the relocal government to have a different plan sources needed to prepare for sea-level from another. But if we don’t coordinate rise: designers, scientists, and city planpolicies and solutions on a broader level, ners at the vanguard of their fields, as well local politics can take over and shape polas local government leaders who embrace icy too much.” both environmental sustainability and Vulnerable populations, she points out, innovation. For the Bay Area to fulfill its are more concentrated in some places potential as a pioneer of climate change than in others, which can complicate the solutions, it will need program models for politics of preparing for sea level rise. In bringing these creative minds together. relatively affluent Foster City, for examDarcy hopes the project’s findings will ple, 81 percent of voters recently approved land on the desks of as many stakeholders a measure to raise $90 million in property as possible, and that the project will entaxes to upgrade the city’s levee system. courage them not only to shift policy but East Palo Alto is similarly vulnerable to also to help spread its model of research, flood damage, but with more renters and teaching, and problem-solving.

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Brandon Whitely: A PATH TO PUBLIC SERVICE

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or Stanford student Brandon Whitely, the decision to major in civil engineering stemmed from the desire to help shape the future of the world’s great cities. Studying in the Sustainable Design and Construction program, he envisioned a career dedicated to energy-efficient buildings and public policy changes to advance construction standards.

As a high school student, he became passionate about climate change, for both the scientific discovery underway and the urgent advocacy building around it. At Stanford, he looked for opportunities “to take amazing science on climate change and apply it in a way that improves people’s lives.” Brandon stumbled across the Resilient Bay Area course, enrolled, and was hooked. He continued through

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several quarters, choosing San Mateo as his region of focus. It was an easy choice: Brandon grew up in San Mateo and always planned to use his education to give back to his community.

The class took field trips every week to visit different city governments, utilities like waste-water treatment plants, and community-based organizations concerned with equity, Brandon says. Over the course of these conversations he came to appreciate why it isn’t enough to design a brilliant solution to a complex problem like climate change; many different stakeholders must embrace it and work together to put it into practice. “So many people are affected by climate change that

barrier excluded them from early warning systems and education about how to prepare for future floods. After that meeting, a member of the class delved into the languages spoken in the county, and updated the project to highlight the need for emergency notifications suited to the area’s diverse population.

The class helped Brandon understand why this kind of relationship-building— bridging academics and civil servants, industries and non-profits, and the full spectrum of demographic groups—is vital but hard to make happen. Early on, he says, the class faced skepticism from some local government contacts who wondered what could be accomplished within the 10-week timeframe of typical academic projects. “Sure, it’s nice to offer students an educa“There’s a disconnect in people’s tional experience,” they understanding of how climate change thought, but we’re working at full tilt on some serious works on a global scale and how it problems. How can this help us?” plays out in an individual community.”

But the Stanford class’s model reassured them: the team would commit to a year-long partnership, and it takes a long time to develop something it would use an iterative process to deliver effective—and the process has to be comsomething most useful for the people prehensive and inclusive.” on the front lines. Midway through the All too often, though, important voices course, for example, some San Mateo are left out. Brandon recalls meeting county officials wondered what would Ever Rodriguez, a community leader in happen if floods shut down critical infraNorth Fair Oaks, an unincorporated area structure like waste removal plants or the in San Mateo county where residents are Dumbarton Bridge, and others expressed predominantly low-income and Spanconcerns that poorer communities might ish-speaking. He said that his community see homes abandoned by those who shared the same concerns as their neighcouldn’t afford repairs. So Brandon shifted bors about flooding, but the language focus to strengthening those elements

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of the risk model. Ultimately, he says, he and his fellow students cared more about “getting something done” than burnishing their academic careers, and that made their partnerships all the more fruitful.

Brandon also credits the class with cultivating his communications skills. Presenting scientific and engineering concepts in a style accessible to a wide audience can be challenging, especially when you spend most of your time on campus with others who are fluent in your discipline’s jargon and technical intricacies. When speaking before a room full of public officials, walking them through the team’s findings and fielding their often incisive questions, Brandon developed new confidence in a skill that might otherwise go overlooked in

his academic training.

Now a newly minted Stanford graduate, Brandon is taking this experience with him as he begins his next chapter in the Bay Area. Asked about his hometown’s efforts to prepare for sea-level rise in the coming decades, he sounds a realistic but hopeful note: “Everyone says they care about it— that’s the easy part. It’s harder to connect that energy to concrete action, especially since it isn’t necessarily the big events that will cause the most damage. There’s a disconnect in people’s understanding of how climate change works on a global scale and how it plays out in an individual community. How can we prepare on the local level, the neighborhood level? That’s the conversation that needs to happen.”

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Partners

Collaborators

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

San Mateo County Office of Sustainability

Department of Geophysics

City of San Mateo

Bill Lane Center for the American West

Association of Bay Area Governments

Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Haas Center for Public Service

San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission

Stanford Public Policy Program

Leaders Jenny Suckale is assistant professor of geophysics and, by courtesy, of civil and environmental engineering.

Leonard Ortellano is UPS Foundation Professor of Civil Engineering in Urban and Regional Planning. ortolano@stanford.edu

jsuckale@stanford.edu Derek Ouyang is a lecturer in Stanford’s Sustainable Urban Systems initiative and cofounder of City Systems.

Bruce Cain is professor of political science and the Spence and Cleone Eccles Family Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West.

douyang1@stanford.edu

bcain@stanford.edu

Jim Leckie is C.L. Peck, Class of 1906 Professor in the School of Engineering and professor, by courtesy, of geological sciences. jleckie@stanford.edu 12