The Megalopolitcan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH)

Coastal Flooding near Tuckerton, NJ. Photo: Matt Drews

The Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH)

What is MACH?

Led by a team at Rutgers University, MACH is a consortium of 13 institutions whose mission is to conduct the scientific research needed to develop effective, evidence-based responses to coastal climate change risks, with a primary focus in the Philadelphia-New Jersey-New York City region.

Funded initially by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Coastlines and People (CoPe) program, MACH is guided by four primary goals:

To do science that is useful and used.
To do science that advances understanding of how coastal climate hazards, landforms, and human decisions interact.
To train the next generation of leaders in transdisciplinary climate research and engagement.
To learn how to do the first three goals better.

Understanding and responding to the risks of climate change is a complex and long-term endeavor requiring the insight and initiative of a wide array of specialists, leaders, and community members. This is why MACH takes an integrated approach, bringing together researchers in a wide range of disciplines – climate and sea-level scientists, engineers, economists, social scientists, philosophers, and others – and a broad range of stakeholders.

MACH aims to provide insights that not only benefit local communities but also contribute to a broader understanding of climate-related challenges faced by urban coastal areas around the world. We do this by prioritizing stakeholder engagement, ensuring that our research is guided by, and benefits, those who are most vulnerable to climate change.

Goals

Do science that is useful and used

Facilitate evidence-based, flexible, equitable, and robust long-term planning to manage climate risk.

Advance scientific knowledge

Deepen understanding of how coastal climate hazards, landforms, and human decisions at household, municipal, market, and policy scales interact to shape climate risk.

Develop the science and adaptation workforce

Train the next generation of leaders in transdisciplinary climate research and engagement.

Learn from our experiences

Build an academic/stakeholder partnership model that provides insight for evidence-based, equitable climate risk management in coastal, urban megaregions around the world.

Why is this Important?

Climate change is causing drastic impacts and risks in coastal areas. These impacts are projected to increase and become more widespread. While the direction of changes are clear, researchers are still working to answer many specific questions, such as “where”, “when,” “how much,” and “to what consequence.”

Moreover, the communities, buildings, infrastructures, dunes, wetlands, and other features that make up the coast are complex and constantly changing. Successfully managing climate risk depends upon understanding their dynamics. For example, rising seas, shifting storms, and intensifying heat waves create growing threats to coastal communities. Coastal development patterns, shaped both by markets and policy, can put people in harm’s way or encourage them to move to safer ground. These hazards and development choices affect community welfare and the ability of municipalities to provide the services people depend upon.

Despite the limits of current scientific knowledge, decisions are being and must be made today that affect the risks faced by coastal communities for generations to come. With aging infrastructure and housing that is either unaffordable or unsafe for many, housing and infrastructure investments cannot be put on pause; yet these investments can lock in place patterns of vulnerability that will last for many decades.

A critical challenge is how to navigate an uncertain future by designing flexible risk management strategies. Such strategies should neither assume the worst (potentially incurring unnecessary costs that could weaken communities) nor lock in place decisions that could prove costly and deadly, often putting at risk the most vulnerable members of the community, if current uncertainties resolve in an unfavorable direction. Risk management strategies need to work across a range of potential future scenarios while striving to respect the values of all the people affected.

What Does MACH Do?

MACH is focusing on challenges facing the urban megaregion that spans Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York City. By collaborating with each other and with local residents, officials, and professionals, MACH researchers aim to advance the holistic understanding of both coastal dynamics and decision making in order to address the complex risks posed by climate change here and around the world.

Participating in MACH gives researchers the opportunity to be useful to potential partners while advancing both basic and applied science. Community partners gain access to best available science now, while contributing to the longer-term advancement of the state of scientific understanding. Through this co-generation of knowledge, all participants gain wisdom and contribute to the management of growing climate risks.

MACH researchers focus on interdisciplinary questions like:

What are the potential hazards climate change is creating for communities?
What are the impacts of these hazards on buildings and residents in the communities?
What is important to community members when they are thinking about climate risk and deciding whether to invest in becoming more resilient or to relocate?
What impacts do climate risks and strategies have on a municipality’s finances and ability to provide services to its residents?
How can understanding impacts from climate change be better integrated in existing decision-making systems within an institution like a city government?

These researchers are particularly well suited to support decision making regarding things like:

Changes to land use, like policy decisions about building elevation, zoning, and redevelopment
Preparing infrastructure like water and electric utilities, roads, and bridges for climate hazards
Potential nature-based solutions for local adaptation choices
How different policy and investment choices may affect property values, municipal finances, and the desire of residents to invest in their communities or to relocate
How to communicate risk appropriately for local culture and communication style
Tradeoffs between economic efficiency, equity, and other values in local decision making
Integrating multiple climate strategies within adaptation pathways that preserve future flexibility in light of current uncertainty