A UD-Led Hub

The Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity and Resilience (CHEER) Hub — is a new five-year, $16.5 million project funded by the National Science Foundation Coastlines and People (CoPe) program and housed in the Disaster Research Center.

Join Us!

We’re looking for post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduate summer scholars to join this interdisciplinary, multi-university, multi-year project. We look forward to working with you!

OUR GOAL

The CHEER Hub will advance understanding of the complex interactions among equity, economic prosperity, and resilience to hurricane-related hazards in the context of climate change, and will develop tools to help address these challenges.
Hurricane Harvey, pictured here, brought catastrophic rain, extensive flooding and more than $125 billion in damages to Texas in August 2017.

Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity and Resilience (CHEER) Hub Research Aims

Research Aims
  1. Identify, explain, and quantify the interactions and tradeoffs among the coastal community goals of equity, economic prosperity, and resilience to hazards.
  2. Develop methods to model long-term hurricane hazards in a way that accounts for climate change and integrates wind, rain, storm surge, and wave hazards.
  3. Develop a computational tool to help design policies that can achieve sustainable equity, economic prosperity, and coastal resilience in the context of climate change.
Research Aims
  1. Identify, explain, and quantify the interactions and tradeoffs among the coastal community goals of equity, economic prosperity, and resilience to hazards.
  2. Develop methods to model long-term hurricane hazards in a way that accounts for climate change and integrates wind, rain, storm surge, and wave hazards.
  3. Develop a computational tool to help design policies that can achieve sustainable equity, economic prosperity, and coastal resilience in the context of climate change.

Interdisciplinary, Multi-University Partnership

The CHEER Hub includes researchers from 11 universities and from many disciplines—atmospheric sciences, risk modeling, systems engineering, hydrology, public policy, sociology, economics, wind engineering, geospatial data science, urban planning, coastal oceanography, and program evaluation.

National Science FoundationUniversity of DelawareBoston UniversityCornell UniversityEast Carolina University logoUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
NC State UniversityUniversity of OklahomaStony BrookTexas A&MUCLAUniversity of Florida

THE NEXT GENERATION

The Hub’s education goals center on broadening participation in disaster science and practice, and enriching disaster education in the natural and engineering sciences by bringing diversity, equity, and engagement to the forefront.

Collaborations

McNair Scholars and the Bill Anderson Fund are highly respected national organizations supporting graduate students from underrepresented groups. Partnering with them on recruitment and providing research opportunities benefits all students.

Activities

Student/post-doc professional development is supported through carefully designed activities, including regular cohort seminars, interdisciplinary quick response research opportunities, development of DRCit! modules, and summer lab exchanges.

Mentoring

A cohort of students and postdocs participate in a comprehensive, research-based professional development and mentoring plan. Traditional advisor/advisee relationships, cohort, peer, and tiered mentoring together create a robust support network for students.

Current Opportunities

We are seeking post-docs, graduate student researchers, and undergraduate summer scholars to join this interdisciplinary, multi-university, multi-year project.
Soldiers with the Texas Army National Guard move through flooded Houston streets as floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey continue to rise, Monday, August 28, 2017. More than 12,000 members of the Texas National Guard have been called out to support local authorities in response to the storm. (U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Zachary West)
(U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Zachary West)

PARTNERSHIPS ARE CRITICAL

Understanding and improving hurricane resilience requires close collaboration among many types of stakeholders. The success of the CHEER Hub relies on meaningful engagement with grassroots community organizations, emergency management practitioners, and other national research centers.
Partnership Map

Communities

Partnerships with grassroots community organizations in our 3 case study communities—including NCCAA, CARE of New Bern, CIDA, The Restoration Team and community-affiliate, Pamlico County Disaster Recovery Coalition– help ensure the research reflects and serves the interests of those most affected by hurricane hazards.

World Trade Center terrorist attack

Practitioners

Collaborating closely with emergency management practitioners—including FEMA, U.S. HUD Philadelphia Region, and NCIUA—who can ultimately use CHEER tools will ensure they are as useful as possible.

SimCenter

NHERI

We are working with NHERI SimCenter and DesignSafe-CI to make the data and models created by CHEER widely available.

Contact Us

If you need further assistance or have a specific request, please fill out the form below and we will get back to you shortly.