COS 282-3 - Exploring perceptions of flood risk, community well-being, and resilience in a vulnerable community in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Background/Question/Methods

Building community resilience to natural hazards is becoming imperative in the Anthropocene, as these events become more frequent and severe. Adaptation to climate related impacts is of particular importance in cities because high population densities and highly constructed landscapes introduce additional vulnerabilities to extreme events. Recurring flooding along the Rio Piedras River, in San Juan, Puerto Rico has been impacting adjacent urban communities for more than half a century. A river channelization project by the US Army Corps of Engineers, planned initially in 1978 to reduce flooding, has recently been financed using emergency hurricane disaster funding. However, there has been little official engagement with local citizens to determine what strategies they have adopted to build resilience against flooding and how these strategies will interact with the proposed infrastructural interventions. We conducted 20 door-to-door interviews, using an open-ended survey, with residents of a downstream, working-class community in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in a neighborhood impacted by the proposed channelization. Interviews were transcribed, translated, and analyzed using both deductive and inductive frameworks in NVivo software. Analysis was guided by previously developed models of resilience and well-being in the face of change, which sees community social resources as critical dimensions of community resilience.

Results/Conclusions

Preliminary results reveal a highly vulnerable community with limited resilience strategies. Reports of increasing numbers of vacated dwellings, new residents with no community safety networks, and a lack of community leadership all suggest a deteriorating system. Residents consistently stated that external resources and support were limited, such that residents often relied on each other to recover from floods. When asked about causes of flooding, few identified the river as the primary source of flooding. Instead, residents pointed to lack of maintenance of stormwater infrastructure as the main source of flooding in their neighborhood. A striking lack of green areas further exacerbates these issues, as there is limited flood mitigative potential in existing infrastructure. These results suggest that the proposed channelization is a band-aid solution to a problem that is decimating a vulnerable community. Without complementary capacity-building resources, the channel is likely to have limited benefits, while further pillaging the community of adjacent green areas and an opportunity to improve the natural environment. These results underline the importance of community engagement in the development of infrastructural interventions as adaptations to extremes. Co-creation can lead to solutions that are appropriate to the neighborhood’s conditions and make the best use of limited funding.