Also congratulations to Sam for being named as the 2023 recipient of the Sustainability Impact Award at Dalhousie!
Samantha Howard’s Honours research was published today in The Canadian Geographer (last edition before it changes to Canadian Geographies to allow for gender neutral in French). Her new open access paper, Flood risk mapping in southwestern Nova Scotia: Perceptions and concerns, explores drivers of resistance to publicly available flood risk mapping in Liverpool and Bridgewater, NS, using the dimensions of climax thinking. In her AdMail-distributed survey, Samantha found that generally public flood risk mapping is supported, at least when we asked about it using positively phrased statements. But 16% of people agreed that having such mapping available publicly was an unacceptable risk for real estate values. One in six is low, but can be impactful if those people wield economic or political power. Exploring what drove that expression of resistance, the usual variables had no effect (flood experience, flood risk assessment, perceptions of change in flood risk). But when climax variables were included, two in particular, it almost quadrupled the predictive power of the model. Which variables? Agreeing that “I am not able to cope with the land changes required to deal with significant increases in flood risk at this point in my life” and “Flood management decisions I make do not have implications for others”. This self-orientation even trumped being a parent. This survey served as a good pilot for her current Masters research, currently being written up (when she’s not busy accepting University awards, that is). Congratulations, Sam!
