Focus Areas
Coastal Climate Risk
Understanding climate risks goes beyond simply analyzing climate-related phenomena like sea level rise, extreme precipitation, and heat waves. It also requires examining how these events can affect regions, communities, and individual households differently. A key challenge is navigating an uncertain future, particularly since multiple climate-related phenomena, such as heavy rainfall and sea-level rise, can occur simultaneously and amplify each other’s effects. Risk management strategies must be flexible enough to adapt to various scenarios while respecting the values and needs of all those affected.
Housing, Insurance, and Mortgage Markets
Changing climate conditions will have a profound effect on housing and other real estate assets in the region’s densely populated coastal areas. Our researchers are investigating how climate risks affect property, insurance, and mortgage markets; the economic costs of climate hazards; and the market impacts of policy interventions.
Municipal Finances
Climate change will impact local government revenues and expenditures. Research in this focus area provides information on climate-related financial risk to inform future municipal budget allocation decisions.
Adaptation Strategy Design
This team focuses on how decisions about allocating resources for climate adaptation are made and how stakeholder values are reflected in these decisions. They specifically examine the tradeoffs between the economic benefits of protecting high-value areas and the social benefits of protecting people and places in greatest need.
Household Decision Making
People living in flood-prone areas are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This line of research examines how perceptions of climate change and related risk at the household level are factored into decision-making, particularly in working-class communities like South Philadelphia and Manville, New Jersey.
Transdisciplinary Research and Co-Production Design
Launching a research project involving numerous institutions and disciplines, with robust stakeholder engagement, is a challenge. This focus area reflects on MACH’s design and governance. Our goal is to share lessons learned with the broader research community on how to effectively conduct this type of work.