Project Challenge
Despite levee infrastructure providing critical flood protection to communities across the nation, many levee systems are underfunded, past or near their design life, and unaccredited. Unaccredited levee systems fail to meet standard engineering criteria for adequate levee performance, potentially posing significant safety risks. The team’s goal is to coproduce techno-engineering innovations, powered by digital twin modeling, geophysical testing, risk analysis, and geovisualization, to enhance community-based levee management and decision-making in rural communities.
Accelerating Coproduced Flood Resilience in Rural Levee Communities
Towns of Everett, Patton, Philipsburg, and Smithfiled, Pennsylvania
NSF Award ID: 2431345
PI: Alfonso Mejia, The Pennsylvania State University
2024 Civic Innovation Challenge
Pilot Vision
- Deploy a scalable, innovative techno-engineering approach to rapidly and cost-effectively generate data and information needed to meet essential engineering flood safety criteria for levee accreditation.
- Implement a transferable, community-based, transdisciplinary coproduction model to foster social learning, enhance usability, transform levee evaluation, and improve levee management in under-resourced rural communities.
- Coproduce geovisualization tools, technical guidance, and policy recommendations to support community levee decision-making beyond the pilot civic partners.
Civic Partners:
- Boroughs of Everett, Patton, and Philipsburg, Pennsylvania
- Smithfield Township, Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Research Partners:
- Aterra Solutions
- NHERI RAPID
- Missouri University of Science & Technology
Research Questions
- What are the factors that enable or impede rural communities to engage in proactive levee management and accreditation?
- How can our techno-engineering innovations streamline and reduce the cost of levee evaluation while enabling scalability and transferability to other rural communities?
- How can the coproduction of research- and practice-based knowledge reduce barriers to levee evaluation and accreditation?