Subsidence & Sea Level Rise

When it comes to analyzing the impacts of sea level rise on coastal buildings, this project investigates the use of satellite geodesy to monitor buildings in Miami-Dade for land subsidence. A key opportunity of this work is to develop proactive communication methodologies with community members in order to communicate subsidence information to the residents of the affected structures without creating adverse and reactive responses.

  • With sea level rise and coastal erosion at foot, several items come into question including of South Florida’s coastline structures:

    • Safety of Florida’s aged (> 30 years) beach condominium buildings

    • Need for new technology to monitor and assess the structural health of condominium high rises

    • Improvement recommendations of county protocols for building recertification.

    • Generate new methods for mapping subsidence hotspots in South Florida based on satellite technologies.

    • Validate satellite technologies using ground-based measurements.

    • Identify cracks in buildings as signals for potential areas of differential subsidence and develop appropriate monitoring procedures to assess repair options.

    • Develop building practices and guidelines for sustainable site development associated with no or minimal subsidence impact of neighboring development

    • Further investigate climate change impacts on land subsidence such as with sea level rise

  • Fall 2021

    • ULINK Grant Awarded

    • Field visits planned

    Spring 2021-Spring 2022

    • Team building meetings on community engagement initiatives

    • Preliminary site visits

    Spring 2022-current

    • Project is ongoing in monitoring and data collection of selected sites.

    • Continued identification of partnerships.

Project Team

Dr. Falk Amelung Dr. Esber Andiroglu, Dr. Imelda K. Moise, Dr. Antonio Nanni, Amin Sarafraz, Fari Aziz Zanjani, Nina Jean-Louis, and Sara Mirzaee

External Collaborators

Miami Dade county officials and selected HOA collaborations

Funding Sources

University of Miami (UM) ULINK Resilience Challenge Grant

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