NASGRP to Support HRI Collaborative Project Examining Nueces County Public Health Data Systems

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX – The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Community Resilience group, integrated within HRI’s Geospatial Sciences team, will collaboratively work with partner agencies and organizations on a project that will provide Nueces County leaders with environmental, climate, and social data that can be utilized when planning more resilient coastal communities in South Texas. The Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will support the project with over $1.4 million in grant funding.

Dr. James Gibeaut, HRI’s Endowed Chair for Coastal and Marine Geospatial Sciences, will be the project’s principal investigator with the project lead as Dr. Katya Wowk, former HRI Chair for Community Resilience and current Senior Social Scientist with The Water Institute. The project engages several community-based organizations and will result in three products, including a geospatial tool that broader decision-makers such as the Corpus Christi City Council, Corpus Christi Emergency Management, and others, can use to integrate social determinates of health, climate, and environment into emerging policies, plans and agendas.

HRI’s Geospatial Sciences group seeks a better understanding of the dynamic links between geomorphology, sediments, hydrology, climate, and biology that create the various environments of coastal zones. Researchers apply remote sensing, ground studies, and geographic information systems to build time series of environmental conditions. These time series, combined with data on processes such as sea-level rise, storms, and human activities, are the chief tools for developing process-response models of geoenvironmental change. Maps and model results are used to help develop and apply environmental policy.

The HRI Community Resilience group focuses on transdisciplinary approaches to strengthen community resilience, which is defined as the ability of a system to absorb and bounce forward from adverse shocks and stressors. The “system” includes societal pillars - socio-cultural, economic, environmental, infrastructure, and governance - and their key subcomponents. This group’s research advances the understanding of how those components interact to influence resilience and whether resilience is being built equitably.

Those interested can learn more about the project by visiting the project page.

The research reported in this release was supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine under award number SCON-10000920.

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Gulf Research Program or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.