RAPID: Evaluating the Resilience of Small Community Water Systems (CWS) to Hurricanes Helene and Milton on Continental Coasts and Barrier Islands in Southwest Florida

Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Florida consecutively, particularly impacting the southwest region, within a two-week span from late September to early October 2024. These unprecedented back-to-back storms caused widespread and profound devastation to critical infrastructure, including water supply systems. These impacts are especially concerning for small community water systems (CWS) in Southwest Florida’s coastal and barrier island communities, each serving 10,000 or fewer customers. Unlike large, centralized water facilities, these small CWS typically lack the capacity to adapt to changing climates and unforeseen natural hazards due to their limited size, geographic isolation, and scarce resources. Specific challenges include limited operational expertise, barriers to financial resources and technical assistance, and personnel shortage. However, little information is available on how these systems perform during hurricanes or what specific barriers restrict their adaptability. The catastrophic effects of the two hurricanes on small CWS in Southwest Florida present a rare and valuable opportunity to address this knowledge gap and enhance resilience strategies for these critical systems. This RAPID project aims to advance understanding of the hurricane resilience behaviors of small community water systems. Supported by strong local logistical and technical resources, this study will rapidly collect highly transient, perishable data on the adaptive behaviors of small CWS across six counties in Southwest Florida through surveys, site visits, and a workshop. The collected data will be analyzed to assess storm adaptation using resilience metrics, recognize key failure causes, and determine vulnerable system components. Further analysis will examine how factors such as system design and operational practices influence resilience outcomes, leading to the identification of key barriers to hurricane resilience. Based on these findings, combined with comparative analyses referencing of historical Florida data and case studies from other hurricane-affected regions, the project will develop actionable strategies to enhance the adaptive capacity of small CWS for future hurricanes.This project targets to have significant will impacts on hurricane-affected populations, coastal communities, and precollege and college education. A disaster-resilient water supply is essential for meeting basic human needs and supporting community recovery. Although this project focuses on Florida, the hurricane-related challenges faced in this region reflect those emerging in other vulnerable U.S. coastal areas. As a result, the project findings will have broader applicability for enhancing water infrastructure resilience across U.S. coastal regions, which contribute 46% of the U.S. economy and have substantial cultural, recreational, and national defense values. In addition to its research goals, the project will enhance educational engagement. The PI will present findings at universities in Southwest Florida, expanding students’ awareness of engineering’s role in addressing hurricane-induced crises. Disaster resilience topics will be integrated into an existing undergraduate course, while the project will offer valuable research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at Montclair State University (MSU).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.