Community Collaborations Beyond the Lab
The Institute for Climate and Community Resilience reaches out to build a network of trust and understanding to help communities improve lives and face real-world challenges.
The faculty researchers of UT’s Institute for Climate and Community Resilience (ICCR) did not know how immediately their work would address a major regional climate issue when they launched in the summer of 2024. That fall, their mission of advancing climate science and creating community-driven solutions for climate resilience was called to action by the unprecedented devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene throughout Appalachian communities.
“One of the most urgent questions we’ve heard from community partners is how to better understand and plan for flash flooding in rural, mountainous areas — a challenge not sufficiently addressed by current federal flood hazard maps,” said Kelsey Ellis, ICCR director and professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability. “We have learned that communities need tools that reflect the creeks behind their homes —not just the big river running through downtown.”
ICCR researchers are working to address that gap by developing and refining flood mapping and decision-making tools that support local emergency response, infrastructure planning, and risk communication. Their approach establishes standing partnerships between researchers and the community-serving organizations who put resilience into action daily.
“We are also helping build shared frameworks and best practices that support long-term, cross-sector collaboration,” said Ellis. “We are working to center the ICCR within an emerging community of practice for resilience in our region that operates across academic research, community organization practitioners, and funding foundations to address current realities and future risks to the lives and livelihoods of our neighbors.”
Sharing Science with the Community
One of their most significant outreach efforts in 2025 was the Forum for Advancing Appalachian Climate Science and Community Resilience. This two-day interdisciplinary event at the UT Conference Center brought together researchers from multiple UT colleges, scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other universities, and community leaders, planners, emergency managers, and nonprofit practitioners from seven Appalachian states.
“While the science was strong, the focus was partnership,” said Nicholas Shanahan, ICCR associate director. “Climate impacts in Appalachia land directly on housing, public health systems, infrastructure, and local economies, and researchers are not always connected to the people responding on the ground. This event helped bridge that gap.”
The Heising-Simons Foundation funded the event as an effort to advance science through meaningful networking opportunities
“This builds on ICCR-led initiatives such as the Appalachian Flash Flooding Working Group,” said Ellis. “This group brings together scholars from geography, civil and environmental engineering, biosystems engineering and soil science, landscape architecture, and allied fields to advance more actionable flood science for communities most at risk.”
Efforts like these reflect the ICCR’s focus on connecting scholars from across the university, aligning research capacity with real-world needs, co-developing ideas, and building durable partnerships rooted in trust.
“Our goal is to leverage UT’s scientific strength beyond the lab, equipping communities to adapt and thrive,” said Ellis. “The Forum helped lay the groundwork for a sustained regional network advancing climate resilience across Appalachia.”
Six graduate-student associates were hired to support the November symposium. They gained experience and contributed to discussions on the challenges of climate resilience in Appalachia and how to build successful scholar-community partnerships.
Resilience is in the Details
Core ICCR members and affiliated faculty are deep into studies on Hurricane Helene’s aftermath, addressing multiple aspects to form plans to respond to future extreme climate events.
ICCR faculty Eminé Fidan, assistant professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, leads a USDA-funded study on the effects of the flood waters and sediment left on agricultural land in the wake of the tropical system. Recognizing that Helene’s impacts in East Tennessee were primarily agricultural, Fidan and team work hand-in-hand with local farmers to address skepticism regarding future land productivity. By providing essential soil and water testing and restoring eroded streambanks wiped out by the storm, the team is directly answering the urgent concerns of producers whose livelihoods depend on the land. Overall, Fidan has helped shape the center’s mission and direction of physical studies of Appalachian flooding challenges, conducting interdisciplinary research and helping form the Appalachian Flash Flooding Working Group.
Faculty affiliate Anna Marshall, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability, leads a National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project that works to understand landslide and flood response in smaller mountain watersheds. Her work looks at how wood and sediment are pulled into landslides, how they move, how they are stored in different parts of the watershed, and how these phenomena differ across watersheds.
Haochen Li, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, led the development of the East Tennessee Flood Risk Intelligence Service, a flood mapping and forecast model that bridges the gap between computational science and applications for local governance. ICCR supported this project by securing the East Tennessee Development District as a community partner. They are now pursuing federal funding to grow and implement the service across East Tennessee.
Ellis is also studying the Helene aftermath through an NSF RAPID project, examining how social vulnerability and the lack of community experience with inland hurricanes exacerbated challenges in communicating the risks and forming the decisions for protective action-making in the region.
Relationships Build Trust in Research
The ICCR continues moving forward with approaches that unite interdisciplinary scholars with community partners to address climate challenges with creativity, innovation, and a commitment to equitable, place-based solutions.
“One of the key insights we’ve gained is just how essential trust and long-term relationships are to climate resilience,” said Shanahan. “And how complex that is when bridging not only disciplines, but sectors that operate on very different timelines, priorities, and pressures. Academic research often moves on grant cycles and the academic calendar; community organizations are responding to needs in real time.”
While funding structures, power dynamics, and institutional requirements don’t always align neatly, the ICCR exists to support both the UT research ecosystem and the community organizations and local governments who translate knowledge into action.
“Our job is to help identify and cultivate the collaborations where those two missions reinforce each other rather than compete for attention,” said Shanahan. “That shift—from ‘project-first’ to ‘relationship-first’—is helping shape our identity and our mission.”
By Randall Brown