Abstract: Sea-level rise is an unavoidable threat of global climate change, and coastal communities and regions around the world will be forced to adapt to varying degrees in the coming century. Communities will be faced with local decisions about where their future shorelines will be established and what mosaic of shoreline typologies (built, nature-based, hybrid) will be implemented. Understanding future coastal conditions and projecting the impacts of adaptation actions requires analysis of the hydrodynamics, infrastructure systems, and governance processes and structures throughout the region. Through integrated modeling of these systems in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have identified three types of interdependence that emerge from the multiscale structure of the environmental, built, and social systems. The implications of these interdependencies for regional adaptation will be explored, and I will reflect on the last several years of adaptation planning and policy-making in the SF Bay Area, including how this work has (or has not) successfully informed policy.

Bio: Dr. Mark Stacey is the Henry and Joyce Miedema Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and teaching focus on coastal adaptation from the perspective of coastal and estuarine hydrodynamics with an emphasis on social and infrastructural impacts. All of Professor Stacey's degrees were from Stanford University, where he received a B.A.S. in Physics and Political Science (1991), an M.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering (1993), and a Ph.D in Civil & Environmental Engineering (1996).