image: A research team led by Anamaria Bukvic, assistant professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, received $2 million award from the Department of Defense under its Minerva Research Iniative.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Anamaria Bukvic.
The Department of Defense has awarded $46.8 million in grants to 19 university-based faculty teams under its Minerva Research Initiative, including a $2 million grant a team led by Anamaria Bukvic, assistant professor in the Department of Geography in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.
Bukvic is the principal investigator for a project titled Anticipating Coastal Population Mobility: Path to Maladaptation or Sociopolitical Stability. Peter A. Beling, director of the Intelligent Systems Division at the Virginia Tech National Security Institute, and Tom Ellison, deputy director of the Center for Climate and Security, will collaborate with Bukvic on this study.
How climate change affects population mobility
The interdisciplinary team will evaluate how coastal maladaptation — or failed efforts to adapt to climate change — affects population mobility in coastal areas of U.S. allies and territories in the Indo-Pacific, either pulling people in or pushing them out.
This research has three elements that seek to better understand population mobility in the Indo-Pacific coastal zone and its impacts on socioeconomic stability:
- It combines interdisciplinary expertise in human dimensions of coastal issues through a social science lens, machine learning, and climate security policy.
- It addresses a topic of growing importance for the climate and security communities in a geographic area of strategic national importance.
- It focuses on maladaptation, which often receives less research and policy attention despite its ability to exacerbate social vulnerabilities and destabilize affected regions.
Why this is important
The Department of Defense relies on these allies and territories to conduct joint exercises and deployments essential to its strategy of integrated deterrence in the region, which includes the South and East China seas and Taiwan.
“The novelty of our approach is that it centers on adaptation/maladaptation as pull-push forces that could drive population movement away from or toward the coast,” said Bukvic. “Coasts, being the most critical for the U.S. strategic interest, might then become epicenters of vulnerability and social destabilization with broader security implications.”
The project will advance methodological innovation that combines social science inputs with machine learning and will produce knowledge that can be transferred to other coastal contexts, including the United States, Bukvic said.
About the Minerva Research Initiative
The three- to five-year Minerva award supports basic research in social and behavioral sciences on topics relevant to U.S. national security. Through its network of faculty investigators, the Minerva Research Initiative builds strong connections to the social science community to help the Department of Defense better understand and prepare for future challenges.