Climate Adaptation and Resilience

Our research delivers data-driven insights to decision-makers as governments and communities confront the reality of a rapidly changing climate. A cross-cutting theme is a focus on equity to protect and empower populations most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Our research is organized as follows:

Politics and Governance (see below)
Planning and Housing (see below)
Heat Equity (see our dedicated webpage featuring research on Heat Governance and Policy; Planning for Heat-Resilient Communities; and Actionable Data for Heat-Health Equity)

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Politics and Governance

Reshaping Communities: Local Political Response to Climate Risks (current project)

Researcher: Megan Mullin

Project supported by an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship on the role of local democracy in reshaping towns and cities as they confront growing climate hazards. The research examines whether local efforts to become more resilient reinforce racial and economic inequalities caused by past policies.

Local News Reporting and Mass Attitudes on Infrastructure Investment (2024 article in Political Behavior)

Researchers: Andrew Trexler and Megan Mullin
Funder: Duke University

Investing in basic infrastructure is vital for communities’ climate resilience, but the public is often unaware of the need for investment and the consequences of infrastructure deterioration. This study used evidence from a national survey experiment to show that content-rich local news reporting increases public support for preventive spending and willingness to hold local leaders accountable for failing to invest in prevention. Maintaining a climate-resilient physical infrastructure is tied to maintaining the civic infrastructure of local news.

US Partisan Polarization on Climate Change: Can Stalemate Give Way to Opportunity? (2023 article in Political Science & Politics)

Researchers: Megan Mullin and Patrick J Egan

This study highlights three recent developments that could advance climate policy, despite partisan politics: 1) partisan cohesion and Democratic initiative, 2) clean-energy expansion in Republican states, and 3) partisan distribution of climate impacts.

Urban Heat Governance: Examining the Role of Urban Planning (2023 article in Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning)

Researchers: Ladd Keith, C.J. Gabbe, and Erika Schmidt
Funder: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

This study examined five large, climatically-diverse US cities to better understand urban heat governance with a focus on the field of urban planning. The researchers found that aspects of heat planning occur across a variety of municipal plans but only a small number of strategies were explicitly framed in terms of heat, suggesting an opportunity to better connect heat with other policy goals.

The following research was led by Megan Mullin as she transitioned her role as a professor at Duke University to LCI’s faculty director.

Buyouts with Rentbacks: A policy Proposal for Managing Coastal Retreat (2022 article in Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences)

Researchers: Andrew G. Keeler, Megan Mullin, Dylan E. McNamara & Martin D. Smith

This article introduces an innovation in buyout policy that would allow residents to remain in their homes as renters after being bought out. The researchers develop the basic structure of such a policy, recommend funding mechanisms, and discuss the policy’s potential for improving outcomes in the case of necessary migration away from coastal areas.

To Adapt to Climate Impacts, Come to Grips with Politics (2022 article in Nature)

Researcher: Megan Mullin

This article speaks to the need to understand and surmount political hurdles to adapt to climate change.

External Drivers of Participation in Regional Collaborative Water Planning (2022 article in Policy Studies Journal)

Researchers: Emily V. Bell, Amanda Fencl, Megan Mullin

This research examined participation by water service providers in collaborative planning forums. Researchers find: participation in regional water planning is associated with perceived risk to water supply from changing climatic conditions, but not with perceived risk from changing patterns of demand.

Avoiding climate change: “Agnostic adaptation” and the politics of public silence (2020 article in Annals of the American Association of Geographers)

Researcher: Liz Koslov

The term agnostic adaptation refers to actions that address climate change’s effects without acknowledging its existence or human causes. This article explores how action and silence coexist and even serve to reinforce each other.

Is Coastal Adaptation a Public Good? The Financing Implications of Good Characteristics in Coastal Adaptation (2020 article in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management)

Researchers: Sierra C. Woodruff, Megan Mullin & Malini Roy

The researchers argue that good characteristics of coastal adaptation – subtractability, excludability, heterogeneity, joint production, and capital intensity – create political opportunities for application of financing mechanisms such as property taxes, district-level finance, and bonds. Exploring the good characteristics of an adaptation strategy can help communities identify an appropriate and feasible mechanism for financing it.

The Effects of Drinking Water Service Fragmentation on Drought-related Water Security (2020 article in Science)

Researcher: Megan Mullin

This discussion of the local political economy of drinking water provision reveals the constraints on community water systems that affect their performance when confronting drought hazards. Fragmentation in responsibility for drinking water contributes to disparities in drought vulnerability, preparation, and response across households and across communities.

Paying to Save the Beach: Effects of Local Finance Decisions on Coastal Management (2018 article in Climate Change)

Researchers: Megan Mullin, Martin D. Smith & Dylan E. McNamara

This study evaluates how project costs affect coastline management over the long term. Results from modeling cost distributions demonstrate that delineating tax rates to account for unequal benefits of local public goods could facilitate local investment in climate change adaptation.

Planning and Housing

Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City (forthcoming book)

Author: Liz Koslov

LCI scholar Liz Koslov’s book Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City is an ethnographic account of community-organized retreat from the coast in New York City after Hurricane Sandy. The book, under advance contract with the University of Chicago Press, highlights Dr. Koslov’s examination of the social impacts of buyouts, a form of property acquisition in which houses and lots are purchased from willing sellers with future development prohibited.

See the related article The Case for Retreat in Public Culture.

Critically assessing the idea of wildfire managed retreat (2023 paper in Environmental Research Letters)

Authors: Liz Koslov and Kathryn McConnell
Funder: Ziman Center for Real Estate Faculty Research

The authors lay out a research agenda to critically evaluate managed retreat – the intentional relocation of built infrastructure away from hazardous areas – as an adaptive response to wildfire.

People or Property Legal Contradictions, Climate Resettlement, and the View from Shifting Ground (2023 book)

Authors: Alessandra Jerolleman, Elizabeth Marino, Nathan Jessee, Liz Koslov, Chantel Comardelle, Melissa Villarreal, Daniel de Vries, Simon Manda

This book examines the use of relocation and resettlement processes in the U.S. as a means of responding to climate change. It argues that certain contradictions in property law diminish the usefulness of relocation as a successful strategy.

Reducing Heat Risk for People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness (2023 article in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction)

Researchers: C.J. Gabbe, Jamie Suki Chang, Morayo Kamson, and Euichan Seo
Funder: Santa Clara University Environmental Justice and the Common Good Research Grant

In this study, the researchers identified where unhoused residents in Santa Clara County were disproportionately exposed to heat and how they coped. They found that unhoused participants favored staying in places where they had more stability but these locations tended to have less access to shade and water, thus they faced difficult trade-offs.

High Temperatures and Electricity Disconnections for Low-income Homes in California (2022 journal article)

Authors: Alan Barreca, R. Jisung Park, and Paul Stainier

Evidence suggests that households adapt to hot weather by employing energy-intensive technologies, such as air conditioning. Ensuing energy expenses might cause some low-income households to incur insurmountable energy debt and eventually become disconnected due to non-payment. This study examines this possibility using electricity use and disconnection data for 300,000 low-income households from California 2012–2017. It finds that each additional day with a maximum temperature of 95 °F causes electricity expenses to increase by 1.6% in the current billing period, and the relative risk of disconnection to increase by 1.2% 51–75 days later. In the context of climate change, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates the average risk of disconnection would increase by 12% if today’s weather resembled projected weather for the 2080–2099 period.

Households Living in Manufactured Housing Face Outsized Exposure to Heat and Wildfire Hazards: Evidence from California (2022 journal article)

Authors: Gregory Pierce, C.J. Gabbe and Annabelle Rosser

This study analyzes the risk of extreme heat and wildfires on households living in manufactured housing, such as mobile homes. Focusing on California, the researchers examine census tract-level data on housing characteristics, along with hazard measures. The study finds that households in manufactured housing face consistently higher exposure to extreme heat and wildfires. This research underscores the necessity of a joint approach to strengthen the resilience of existing manufactured housing, provide more affordable housing alternatives in less exposed locations and limit the growth of new housing in highly exposed areas.

Housing and Urban Heat: Assessing Risk Disparities (2022 article in Housing Policy Debate)

Researchers: C.J. Gabbe, Evan Mallen, and Alexander Varni

The researchers find that households in detached single-family homes have the lowest heat risk and multifamily renters have the highest heat risk. AC availability is a major contributing factor and there are heat risk disparities for households in neighborhoods with larger proportions of Hispanic and Asian residents.

When rebuilding no longer means recovery: the stress of staying put after Hurricane Sandy (2021 article in Climatic Change)

Researchers: Liz Koslov, Alexis Merdjanoff, Elana Sulakshana, Eric Klinenberg

This article presents data from individuals who opted either to rebuild or relocate with the help of a voluntary home buyout after Hurricane Sandy. Findings show those who lived in buyout-eligible areas and relocated were significantly less likely to report worsened stress than those who rebuilt in place.

Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (2021 book)

Author: Kian Goh

Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and exclusionary actions. In this book, Kian Goh examines climate change response strategies in three cities—New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam—and the mobilization of community groups to fight the perceived injustices and oversights of these plans.

Sociology and the climate crisis (2020 article in Annual Review of Sociology)

Researchers: Eric Klinenberg, Malcolm Araos, Liz Koslov

This article reviews research on trends brought on by the climate crisis: (a) compounding and cumulative disasters, infrastructure breakdown, and adaptation; (b) intensifying migration and shifting patterns of settlement; and (c) transformations in consumption, labor, and energy.

Evaluating the efficacy and equity of environmental stopgap measures (2020 article in Nature Sustainability)

UCLA Researchers: Holly Jean Buck, Peter Kareiva, Liz Koslov, Will Krantz, Edward A. Parson

This paper examines examples of ‘stopgap measures’ from wildfire risk management, hydrochlorofluorocarbon regulation and Colorado River water management and introduces an analytical framework to assess stopgaps.

Extreme Heat Vulnerability of Subsidized Housing Residents in California (2020 journal article)

Authors: C.J. Gabbe and Gregory Pierce

This study examines whether Californians living in subsidized housing are more vulnerable to extreme heat than those living in unsubsidized housing. The researchers find that subsidized housing is disproportionately located in census tracts at the intersection of high projected extreme heat days (in 2040s), heat-sensitive populations, and barriers to adaptation. These findings indicate the need for targeted housing and land use policy interventions to reduce heat vulnerability.

Subsidized Households and Wildfire Hazards in California (2020 journal article)

Authors: C.J. Gabbe, Gregory Pierce, and Efren Oxlaj

This study focuses on the intersection of subsidized housing and wildfire hazards in California. Results show that subsidized housing is less likely than other housing types to be in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. However, the magnitude of the overlap between vulnerable households and the WUI — which includes households in over 140,000 subsidized units in the WUI — justifies further research and policy action.

How maps make time: Temporal conflicts of life in the flood zone (2019 article in Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action)

Researcher: Liz Koslov

This article examines temporal conflicts (remapping, rezoning, and “at risk” designations) through a case of disputed risk mapping in New York City. While maps are key to rendering the risks of climate change vivid and local, their use as technologies of governing adaptation produces its own contested effects.

The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.
Click on the linked words to hear the pronunciation for the Tongva-language words.
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