Discussion with Sofia Mariyamis on the Importance of Community Engagement in Addressing the Flooding Crisis

01

Background

Will Duhl: To start off, could you talk a little bit about your background, how you got involved with climate and environmental justice in New York City, and your current role at FloodNet?

Sofia Mariyamis

My name is Sofia Mariyamis, and I am the Project Manager at FloodNet NYC. To start off on how I got into this role: I was a college student at Brooklyn College, where one of FloodNet's offices is located.

As a student, I was majoring in urban sustainability and environmental justice, and I was also the president of the Sustainability Club. I got into FloodNet because I was interested in the project and doing research for my thesis around flooding.

A lot of my involvement with FloodNet has been focused on community engagement. That was a really good place to not only understand the project and the importance of having accessible, real-time flood monitoring data in New York City, but also to realize how these projects, while funded by the city, are also there to serve the residents of New York City.

It was important in understanding why that information is sometimes more important to the people on the ground experiencing these extreme weather events every day, versus some of the bigger bodies like the city. Even though the city uses the data to understand where investments should go and where protection is needed, we have learned and seen how FloodNet has really been able to help communities protect themselves, get more involved, and realize that flooding is not just an imminent threat every 12 years like Hurricane Sandy, but something happening on a more constant basis.

02

Community collaboration

Will Duhl: With FloodNet rooted in community engagement, what are the primary ways FloodNet collaborates with local communities, and how is that a fundamental part of the mission and success of the project?

Sofia Mariyamis

That is a really great question. For context, FloodNet is a project operated by NYU, CUNY, and city agencies, all working together to develop tools to monitor real-time urban flooding and implement these tools across all of New York City. The whole point of this is to make flood data and monitoring tools available in a way that is useful to stakeholders like NYU and CUNY, but also to residents, community-based organizations, and fellow researchers such as yourself.

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) gave us money to install about 450 to 500 sensors across New York City. Those sensors did not have allocated places prior to the project start. Deployments happened in partnership with community-based organizations and the DEP in order to understand the best places for those sensors. One way that we connected with community residents was through a sensor suggestion form. We got thousands of submissions from residents as to where they would like to see sensors.

Additionally, we share our data with residents through the data dashboard. Residents are always able to look at graphs and charts of our sensor data on the dashboard, which have been made easier to read. Our sensor data has also been coupled with high tide and precipitation data in order for residents to see all the different forms of weather events that are contributing to the immense flooding they might be seeing. If there are researchers who are interested in doing more intensive research with our data, you can always reach out to us, and we can provide you with that as well. Our data is also available on Open Data NYC.

When we get to community engagement, a large part of this project is that we want to put sensors in places that are underserved, under-monitored, and lacking investment. To do that, the community engagement team initially built out three buckets: community outreach, community education, and community action.

Community outreach is simple, ground-level work like attending events, emailing people, communicating about sensor deployments, sending out newsletters, and updating social media. Then, when we get to community education, this is where we start seeing material being built out in order to connect with communities. The community engagement team built out the FloodNet Community Workshop series, which is a series of modules that we can take into communities and practice with them so they can get more involved with our data. We have the Community Voice module, which is a photovoice training used to expand on documented events through pictures alongside the data. Residents can go out and take pictures of what they are seeing, and it will geolocate the image to help with visualization.

Then we have the Community Data and Storytelling module, which is a module for participants to facilitate their own understanding of FloodNet data alongside their experiences through creative storytelling. We use this qualitative information to contextualize what is happening in our sensors and in the real world.

We also have community action, which is a smaller bucket for on-the-ground fieldwork. Here, members might join us on a deployment, or we might support our community partners in creating materials they would like to see. We have to realize there are many communities in New York City where flooding is not their priority issue compared to poverty, food access, or homelessness. There are other issues happening in New York coinciding with extreme weather events, and we need to be aware of that and make clear that we understand.

There are many ways FloodNet has found to connect with community members, and it is a large reason why the project has been so successful, because it is a community-led project. We would not know where to put our sensors if it were not for community residents. We would not understand what communities go through if it were not for the Community Engagement Team leading that effort, connecting with residents, and building those relationships over time. We currently have around 90 community partners, which are organizations that are involved in FloodNet through events, material building, or using our data to communicate with stakeholders in their community. It has made our project very successful.

03

Working with vulnerable communities

Will Duhl: Building off of that point, how has your experience been interacting with historically vulnerable populations, and what are some of the challenges that the project has faced on the community engagement side?

Sofia Mariyamis

My experience interacting with community members has overall been very great and informative. There are not that many projects in New York City that are doing this intense community engagement, and there are not necessarily many models for this. Working with community members has taught us a lot about the process of how communities should be engaged with, why that is so important, and the ways having that level of engagement helps in a project like this. We have interacted with many different kinds of communities that experience different forms of weather events, and many different people who are individually focused on their own community needs.

It has been lovely going to events that our partners facilitate and seeing how our project helps them know more about their community and pinpoint exactly that what they are seeing is true. A lot of the time, when we first came in and talked to people, they would have pictures of all the various flood events outside their homes, basements, schools, or supermarkets. It was hard to understand exactly how much water was sitting there, because in a picture it is hard to distinguish 2 inches from 10 inches. It does not translate that well until we have data backing up what we are seeing.

We have even seen on the news where there are massive pools of water, and in the back of the video is our flood sensor pinpointing exactly how much water is on the ground at that moment. We can supplement that data for ourselves and provide it to communities. It has been wonderful seeing how community members are encouraged to do more in their community by having access to this data. A lot of this information has been coalesced into our Community Engagement Guide, which is a public tool built on all our experiences for other organizations to read and understand about what worked for FloodNet, and replicate it in whatever context they see fit.

Regarding issues or hurdles, a lot of them have happened due to this ever-evolving community engagement strategy. Early on, a common issue was that someone would knock down a sensor or think it was a foreign object in their community and get rid of it. We could not blame them, but it was a great opportunity for us to connect further with communities. We started inviting community members in those areas to deployments to serve as a set of eyes for what is happening, become the voice for that sensor, and interact with people walking by to answer questions.

Our sensors look like cameras, but they are not cameras. They use sound waves that pulse at the ground and measure the distance between the ground and the sensor. If there is water in between, the sound bounces off the water and feeds back to the sensor. If it is normally a 20-inch distance from the sensor to the ground and there are 5 inches of water, we see a 15-inch difference, which tells us the height of the water. Because they look like cameras, residents would question what we were installing. It was really nice having a community member there to explain that it is not a camera, but a flood sensor that uses sound, does not take pictures, does not provide surveillance, and is just a data monitoring project.

We also face physical placement issues. Sensors attach to city-owned U-channel posts that hold stop signs or one-way signs, but they are not always in the perfect place. Tree coverage is another issue; if a sensor runs on solar power and a tree blocks the sun, it can lose power. There are a multitude of issues, but we have found ways to work around them. We are currently at 448 sensors and stopping around 450.

04

Her 2024 op-ed

Will Duhl: I wanted to ask about your 2024 op-ed. Could you summarize the main points and why you think intentional community engagement is so important to prepare for extreme weather?

Sofia Mariyamis

I wrote this op-ed on my way out of being a research assistant at FloodNet while transitioning into larger roles, and it was also a piece I wrote for graduate school. A little background about me: I have lived in a flood-prone neighborhood my whole life. I live in Brighton Beach right on the water. Hurricane Sandy was really bad for us, and extreme weather events tend to flood the block like a river, where the only thing missing is crocodiles!

That was a big factor for me in college and a lot of the reason why I got into the environmental space. I was always thinking about what my work was going to do for my community and how I was going to help the neighborhood I stand in every single day. The op-ed was a way to highlight issues in my neighborhood while showcasing meaningful work I have been doing along this stretch of water with organizations like the Coney Island Beautification Project and the Edgemere Alliance in Far Rockaway.

It was really a way to show that while the city can put a bunch of investments into flood protection and monitoring infrastructure, if you do not have that connection with communities, it is not going to work out the way you think. At the time, the city was implementing citywide projects that I did not necessarily agree with, because I do not believe one solution can fix everything. Each neighborhood needs an individualized way of handling flooding, because flooding is different for everyone across New York City, and some areas barely flood at all.

The piece highlights how community engagement is essential to preparedness and is critical for helping residents feel like they have a voice. Brighton Beach is often overlooked because it sits right between Coney Island (a hotspot) and Manhattan Beach (a wealthy neighborhood). It was great speaking about the importance of community engagement in these areas.

05

Advice for young people

Will Duhl: I'll end off on a fun one. For young people like me who care about climate policy and environmental justice, what fields or projects do you think are valuable for us to pursue in the future?

Sofia Mariyamis

I wouldn't necessarily point out specific projects that are important. I think many environmental projects are important.

If it's of interest to you, go for it. There are projects in energy, flooding, and food access. Food access is an important area because a lot of people are disconnected from their food and don't realize that it grows in the ground and gets shipped off to the supermarket. You might not think it is an environmental issue, but then you realize there are community gardens in New York City and food co-ops that help make locally sourced produce accessible.

It's also about realizing you can go into something like urban sustainability. In college, I realized that urban planning and a love for the natural world go together. I don't have to be building buildings to be an urban planner; I can build city infrastructure, and FloodNet is a form of infrastructure.

Your options are much wider than you think. In the environmental space, you learn technical and people skills that translate to multiple sectors. You don't have to feel like if you aren't working on a flood project or in planting and gardens, you aren't doing something environmental. You can always be doing something environmental.