Current Projects

Cascadia Coastal Hazards Resilience

The coasts of each state in Cascadia present unique conditions, cultures, and challenges affecting the adaptive capacity and resilience of their coastal systems and communities. Cascadia coastal communities face challenges from rapid coastal erosion and flooding, the vulnerabilities associated with rural isolation, and ocean changes that are already threatening incomes, lifestyles, and coastal community traditions and identities. Coastal communities have emphasized the need to improve linkages between researchers and communities as well as improving the accessibility and applicability of research and data. Achieving tailored multi-hazard solutions that align with the diversity of coastal areas and their needs requires co-production by a broad array of entities.

Since 2020, the Ruckelshaus Center has been working with university researchers on two National Science Foundation (NSF) funded efforts to build coastal hazards resilience.

Cascadia Coastal Hazards Research Coordination Network: The Cascadia Coastal Hazards Research Coordination Network (abbreviated to RCN) is a three-year funded effort to bring together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders who seek to mitigate the geohazards on coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest. The goal of the RCN is to co-develop research agendas and establish new collaborations that cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries. The Center is assisting the RCN in pursuing its mission through several activities and pursuits that bring researchers and stakeholders together, including:

• Facilitation of the RCN Steering Committee.
• Design and facilitation of community workshops.
• Helping coordinate activities and facilitate communication between research groups.

Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research HUB: The RCN is closely aligned with a parallel effort that the Center is part of – the Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research HUB (abbreviated to Cascadia CoPes HUB).

Led by Oregon State University and the University of Washington, the Cascadia CoPes HUB is a five-year collaborative research effort focused on increasing resiliency among coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest. The HUB is conducting research and engaging coastal communities with two overarching goals: (1) seek fundamental advances in convergent coastal hazard sciences that will transform our understanding of the risk faced by coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest, and (2) engage communities through the co-production of strategies that will increase adaptive capacity, broaden participation, and achieve equitable and just disaster risk reduction.

Five interconnected teams carry out the work of the Cascadia CoPes Hub:

• Team 1: Tectonic Geohazard Sources and Integrated Probabilistic Modeling
• Team 2: Exposure to Inundation and Coastal Change Hazards
• Team 3: Community Adaptive Capacity
• Team 4: Broadening Participation and Inclusive STEAM Education
• Team 5: Community Engagement and Co-Production of Coastal Hazards And Knowledge

The Ruckelshaus Center co-leads Team 5, coordinating the portfolio of community engagement and co-production activities across the hub. The team’s aim is to promote truly convergent science across all the research projects by supporting researchers in these efforts and by supporting community needs and being responsive to community requests, including direct facilitation of outreach to communities.

For more information, please contact Amanda Murphy or Phyllis Shulman.

Crisis Governing and Decision-Making: Reviewing Lessons From Emergency Management Systems in Washington

The Washington State Legislature provided funding for the Washington Military Department to contract with the William D. Ruckelshaus Center to compare the traditional decision-making systems in Washington State with other decision-making structures and to provide recommendations for future emergency responses. The goal of the project is to implement a comprehensive, cross-jurisdictional exploration of lessons learned from the pandemic about the dynamic between traditional emergency management decision-making systems and other ways decision-making was structured for responses to the pandemic in WA. This exploration will include exploring potential embedded or practiced biases and/or structures that impact considerations of equity, inclusion, and diversity. The project will engage participants in developing a set of recommendations for decision-making systems utilized in governments, universities, businesses, and other entities.

You can learn more about the project here.

For more information, please contact Phyllis Shulman or Jed Chalupa.

Learning From Responses to COVID-19: Improving Preparedness, Recovery, and Resilience in Washington State

The response to COVID-19 in Washington state, while containing many successes, has also highlighted a need for improved cross-sector collaboration and collaborative governance, systems thinking approaches, and engagement of diverse interests and perspectives to prepare for new or recurring emergencies, as well as for recovery. The magnitude and complexity of the COVID-19 response and recovery requires effective crisis decision-making and further innovation to address critical needs, policy challenges, and infrastructure gaps. To address this need, the Ruckelshaus Center’s Advisory Board, along with its core faculty and staff, initiated this pre-assessment and comprehensive learning effort to identify and share key insights from Washington’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The goals of the project are to:

1. Provide decision-makers at the state, local, tribal, regional, and private governance levels with information to continually inform and improve decisions related to short-term and long-term recovery and resilience and to implement improvements across sectors.
2. Identify the intersections and interconnections between what is being learned in multiple sectors.
3. Use these learnings to adapt, innovate, and stimulate new approaches and systemic solutions to address emergent and long-standing public policy challenges.
4. Apply throughout the pre-assessment and comprehensive learning effort race, equity, and social justice principles, including focusing on disproportional impacts, access, and participation.

Read a summary of Phase One, which includes initial findings and potential projects, here.

For more information, please contact Phyllis Shulman.

Puget Sound Energy: Beyond Net Zero Carbon Advisory Committee

Puget Sound Energy, the state’s largest utility, asked the Ruckelshaus Center to facilitate a collaborative and open advisory committee process to design and implement a plan to move to “Beyond Net Zero” carbon by 2045. This endeavor involves complex public policy issues, divergent viewpoints, and potential impacts, both positive and negative, to diverse communities throughout Washington State. PSE saw the Center as uniquely positioned to facilitate broad stakeholder input to problem-solve an approach that recognizes the urgency of the climate crisis, provides benefits and opportunities for frontline communities and populations, and enhances the state economy, while maintaining reliability, safety, and affordability. While meeting regularly with PSE representatives to plan the effort, the Center interviewed each Advisory Committee member to gain insight into how to design an effective collaboration. The Committee members expressed a preference for quarterly, intensive all-day sessions to receive information and provide guidance to PSE. As of September 27, 2022, the Ruckelshaus Center has facilitated four such all-day sessions and has worked with PSE to structure presentations and deliberations, document input, gauge impacts to various constituencies, identify policy considerations, and explore potential partnerships to support this ambitious and visionary transition.

The Year One Summary Report is available here.

For more information, please contact Chris Page or Tye Ferrell.