Virginia Tech awarded NASA grant to advance resilience in vulnerable communities facing geohazards
A research team that includes Manoochehr Shirzaei from the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences has been awarded a prestigious grant from NASA’s Equity and Environmental Justice Program to develop innovative tools for addressing geohazards in vulnerable communities. The project, titled "Integrating Earth Observations Toward Advancing Equitable Resilience to Geohazards in a Changing Climate," aims to build resilience in historically underserved areas prone to environmental risks such as landslides, sinking land, and coastal erosion.
The project is a collaborative effort between experts and community partners, including co-principal investigator Farshid Vahedifard of Tufts University and others. It will focus on two communities in Massachusetts: East Boston and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Both communities are disproportionately at risk from natural hazards and extreme weather, including rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and flooding.
“Our goal is to create a near real-time geospatial framework capable of modeling and mapping geohazards over time,” Shirzaei said. “By identifying priority regions within socially vulnerable communities, we are building proactive measures that will protect people and infrastructure.”
The research will integrate Earth observations from NASA missions, including data from synthetic aperture radar and other satellite imagery, to assess geohazards and infrastructure vulnerability. This cutting-edge framework will also develop the Equitable Vulnerability of Communities and Infrastructure to Geohazards Index, a novel tool designed to map out risks and assist in local planning and disaster mitigation.
Vahedifard emphasized the importance of aligning scientific research with the needs of local communities: “This project recognizes that it’s critical to prioritize adaptation strategies for communities with socioeconomic attributes that make them especially vulnerable to climate change. By co-designing these solutions, we aim to ensure that the tools we develop are practically relevant and empower those most affected to mitigate and recover from environmental risks.”
This initiative is expected to have far-reaching implications beyond the pilot communities in Massachusetts. By developing scalable and adaptable tools, the project aims to create a model that can be applied to other regions facing similar risks. As climate change accelerates the frequency and intensity of geohazards, the research team hopes their work will inform policy decisions, infrastructure planning, and emergency response strategies across the country, ultimately helping communities everywhere to better withstand environmental challenges.
About Shirzaei
Manoochehr Shirzaei is an environmental security expert and associate professor of geophysics and remote sensing in the College of Science at Virginia Tech and a senior fellow with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH). His research interests include sea level rise, land subsidence, flooding hazards and renewable energy. Shirzaei’s team at the Virginia Tech Earth Observation and Innovation Lab monitors and analyzes the environmental impact of geohazards and creates actionable data to help policymakers, and the public to deal with current and emerging hazards.
