Some of the world’s communities most vulnerable to climate-related disasters including rising sea levels, floods and hurricanes are set to work with an international team of researchers to adapt their local areas to the changing climate.

Researchers at the University of Bath will partner with marginalised communities living in Colombia, Indonesia and the USA’s Gulf Coast to help them adapt to climate change, by investigating how to create new resilient, sustainable and regenerative buildings, infrastructure and public spaces.

Experts in Architecture, Engineering and Psychology from Bath will work with an international team of academics and local partners to set up three ‘living labs’, to understand how new resilient, durable and socially appropriate infrastructure and built environments can be created in places threatened by rising sea levels, coastal flooding and extreme storms.

The labs will be located in the Kandanghaur District in the Indramayu Regency, West Java, Indonesia, which has experienced sea level rise and extreme heat; Port Arthur in the USA’s Gulf Coast which has regularly faces damaging hurricanes, and La Iguaná micro-basin in the city of Medellín in Colombia, which is at risk of river flooding and landslides.

Regenerative design

A further focus of the project, which has received CAD$4 million in total project funding from the Government of Canada New Frontiers in International Research Fund, and the Swiss National Science Foundation, will look at how to co-design and make those structures environmentally regenerative, helping to restore biodiverse ecosystems, while encouraging social cohesion and delivering water security.

The team at Bath will be led by Dr Aoife Houlihan Wiberg, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering, and Place Making Research Lead at The Centre for Regenerative Design & Engineering for a Net Positive World (RENEW).

Dr Houlihan Wiberg says: “When I visited Indonesia with our project partners last November, we were due to begin work planning how to map current and future extreme weather effects, such as sea-level rise and flooding. Arriving in one of the local communities we found that people are already waist-deep in water sometimes up to three times a day, due to a combined effect of sea level rise and a localised effect called tidal flushing – it's much more severe than even we imagined and increases the urgency of the work we’re doing.”

Dr Houlihan Wiberg adds: “The increasing complexity and urgency of the climate crisis create significant challenges for people seeking to simply continue living in these locations. Normal approaches require time and resources that many vulnerable communities simply don’t have.

“Through this interdisciplinary research and the Place Based Global Living Labs, which we will set up will allow us the opportunity to work with local people to co-design climate resilient homes and communities. We will also co-create repeatable processes that recognise the interconnectedness of social-ecological systems as a foundation for resilient, regenerative solutions.”

Dr Houlihan Wiberg will be joined in the project by Faculty of Engineering of Design colleagues Dr Chris Blenkinsopp and Dr Tristan Kershaw, both members of Centre for Climate Adaptation & Environment Research (CAER), and Dr Christina Demski, from the University’s Department of Psychology and Deputy Director of the ESRC-funded Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST). They will work alongside international academic and local industry partners in Canada (ETS), Colombia (ITM), Indonesia (ITB), USA (Texas A+M), Switzerland (ETH Zurich), Norway (NTNU) and in the UK with Ulster University.

Showcasing climate resilient adaptations

The partners aim to collaboratively design a framework to use sustainable, innovative and traditional construction techniques in the three living labs that create, improve and showcase climate resilient best-practice adaptations to the areas’ current and future climatic and socioeconomic conditions. Continuous dialogues between residents and the institutions will collectively craft solutions responsive to the people’s needs, while reinforcing the social fabric and building a sense of ownership of the recovered urban space.

The project seeks to address three key objectives: climate change adaptation of vulnerable infrastructure and communities, regeneration of urban ecosystems, and promotion of biodiversity

The resulting strategy will be replicable in other built areas worldwide facing risks from climate change related extreme weather effects, and will contribute to the development of sustainable, inclusive and resilient communities.

Titled Participatory collaborative research to enhance climate change adaptation and mitigation in underserved communities in Asia and North- and South America, the project will be led by the École de Technologie Supérieure, in Montreal, Canada. The University of Bath will receive just over CAD $641,000 (approximately £350k) of the total funding of $4,023,759 to carry out its work. The three-year project will run until 2028.

Dr Houlihan Wiberg is a member of Bath’s RENEW research centre, which earlier this year launched its Manifesto for Regenerative Design and Engineering, seeking to promote the approach among industry practitioners, policymakers and the wider public.