GMU’s Catalina Dueñas to Present Coastal Hazards Research at CCEE

Catalina Dueñas, Assistant Professor from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University is visiting CCEE on November 14th. She investigates reliability analysis methods for coastal hazards. She will present her work on Thursday, November 14th between 11:05 and 12:05pm at ARTN 412. Her abstract is presented below.

Abstract

One of the primary challenges in designing and planning long-term adaptation strategies is the significant uncertainty surrounding future climatic conditions, particularly after mid-century. This situation, often referred to as deep uncertainty, is characterized by a lack of knowledge or consensus regarding the probabilities of various outcomes and their distributions. Recent efforts to assess natural hazard risks in the context of climate change have generally focused on either the evolving nature of the hazards themselves (e.g., shifts in frequency and intensity) or on evaluating infrastructure risk under specific scenarios (e.g., business-as-usual emissions). However, given the high uncertainty surrounding future climate, along with societal and economic changes, there is an urgent need for adaptation strategies that can perform well even when deviating from initial assumptions about future design conditions. This presentation introduces a multi-hazard risk modeling framework aimed at supporting decision-making amidst the deep uncertainty about future climatic conditions. Unlike traditional methods that focus on singular hazard scenarios, our framework considers the complex interactions between climate change impacts on multi-hazard events and their socio-economic consequences. To demonstrate its application, we evaluate the effects of compound flooding on a standard wooden coastal house in late-century scenarios (2080-2099) across three distinct locations on the East Coast. We explore two adaptation strategies—house elevation and floodwall construction—using a multi-objective optimization approach. Our findings reveal that, while house elevation incurs higher initial costs, it effectively reduces cumulative homeowner losses and enhances safety across a range of potential future scenarios.