Friday, Feb 07, 2025 • Brian Lopez : contact

Michelle Hummel, an associate professor of civil engineering, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance her research and education initiatives.

The award, known as CAREER, is the NSF’s highest honor for junior faculty. Recipients are recognized as outstanding researchers who will become leaders in educational excellence and in the integration of education and research at their home institutions.

The nearly $560,000 grant will enable Dr. Hummel to collaborate with local and regional officials in coastal communities to improve management of the adaptation measures used to mitigate flooding from coastal and terrestrial sources.

“We aim to understand how local adaptation decisions influence regional flood risk,” Hummel said, “as well as to evaluate whether coordination among coastal managers and alignment with regional planning efforts can provide improved protection for communities.”

Her research focuses on the drivers and impacts of storm-related flooding and rising sea levels in bays and estuaries. Flooding poses dangers to homes, infrastructure and the economies of coastal communities.

Effective coastal management can help reduce risk from flooding, yet decisions made by one community’s leaders could potentially shift flood hazards to neighboring coastal communities, requiring decision-makers across a particular region to work in tandem.

Hummel will explore how ranges of regional coordination influence the progression of flood risk in coastal regions in the coming decades. To do this, she will integrate two types of models: hydrodynamic models that simulate flood hazards and agent-based models that represent the choices of coastal decisionmakers as they respond to flooding. This could provide a framework for local and regional decision-makers to collaborate and effectively enhance regional resilience to flooding. The modeling approach could also be adapted for comparative studies across coastal regions with dense development and multi-jurisdictional management.

“As sea levels rise and flooding continues to worsen in coastal communities, it is important that those entrusted with preventing loss of life and property be able to make decisions with the best interests of all in mind,” said Melanie Sattler, department chair for civil engineering at UTA. “Dr. Hummel’s work will take into consideration how decisions are made, how policies are created and how each community can work with its neighbors to create solutions that work for everyone.”

— Written by Jeremy Agor, College of Engineering