Imagine a coastal city raising a road to keep traffic moving during floods. The project may help its residents, but its effects do not necessarily stop at the city line. Neighboring communities share transportation networks, waterways and the consequences of decisions about where water goes.
Preparing for rising seas requires organizations to work across those boundaries. Yet exchanging flood maps is different from developing a joint funding proposal or implementing a project together. What helps people make those greater commitments?
My colleagues Francesca Vantaggiato, Mark Lubell, Matthew C. Nowlin, Majid Shafiee-Jood and I explored that question in a study published in Public Administration Review. We compared sea-level rise adaptation in Hampton Roads, Virginia; the Charleston-area Tri-County region of South Carolina; and California’s San Francisco Bay Area.
Our analysis points to the importance of connections across planning groups, alongside the expertise, professional involvement and organizational support that help people work together. Recognizing flood risks is important. Having the capacity to respond together is a different challenge.
Why one organization cannot do it alone
Coastal adaptation involves local governments, state and federal agencies, nonprofits, researchers, consultants and other organizations. Each brings different responsibilities, resources and knowledge.
Researchers call this arrangement polycentric governance: a system with multiple centers of decision-making rather than one organization directing everything.
That structure creates opportunities to learn and pool resources. It also creates coordination problems. Before work can begin, an organization may need to identify partners, understand their priorities and negotiate responsibilities.
Planning groups and partnerships provide places for those interactions. Researchers refer to these as policy forums. They can include formal regional initiatives and less formal working groups where people exchange information and make decisions.
We looked beyond what happens within one partnership to examine people’s participation across the wider network of groups in each region.
Sharing information is different from committing to joint work
We analyzed surveys from 878 respondents in the San Francisco Bay Area, 152 in the Charleston-area region and 153 in Hampton Roads. The surveys were conducted in 2018, 2022 and 2023–2024, respectively, and asked about collaborative activities during the preceding year.
We grouped those activities into three categories:
- Information sharing: exchanging information with other organizations.
- Planning and development: activities such as joint planning, organizing public meetings and preparing funding proposals.
- Action-oriented collaboration: activities such as implementing projects, conducting joint research, publishing reports and signing formal agreements.
These categories involve different commitments. Sharing a document generally asks less of an organization than agreeing to fund, staff or deliver work with a partner.
Information sharing was the most common activity in all three regions. Formal agreements and joint litigation were much less common. Counting partnerships or meetings therefore provides an incomplete picture of what organizations are doing together.
Connections across groups matter
Across the combined analysis, participation in more planning groups was consistently associated with more collaboration, although the relationships varied by region and type of activity.
Repeated interaction offers a plausible explanation. Working across groups can help people learn whom to contact, understand other organizations’ responsibilities and identify opportunities that might otherwise be missed.
But the findings do not establish that attending another meeting causes collaboration. People already doing collaborative work may join more groups. The relationships can develop together.
The practical implication is to examine what those connections enable. Does a planning group help participants find technical expertise, identify funding partners or clarify who can make a decision? Does it connect work underway in one organization with related work elsewhere?
Creating additional committees without considering their purpose could add demands on participants’ time. The useful question is whether participation makes joint work more feasible.
Concern needs capacity behind it
When we analyzed the three regions together, people who felt better informed, whose jobs involved more sea-level rise work and who believed their organizations devoted more resources to adaptation generally reported more planning and action-oriented collaboration.
Concern about rising seas had less consistent relationships with the different activities. People who perceived greater agreement about the risks did not consistently report more collaboration.
Awareness and agreement still matter. But explaining a problem cannot, by itself, provide the staff time, knowledge or organizational support needed to address it.
An employee may recognize flood risks yet have little time to develop partnerships alongside other duties. An organization may support a regional proposal but lack the expertise to contribute. Those examples illustrate why willingness and capacity need to be considered together.
Hampton Roads complicates the picture
The relationship between resources and collaboration was not the same everywhere. In the Hampton Roads analysis, respondents who believed their organizations provided resources more adequate for adaptation reported fewer joint action-oriented activities.
One possible explanation is that organizations with sufficient resources can undertake some work independently. The study does not establish that explanation, and the result does not tell us whether independent or collaborative action was more effective.
This distinction matters throughout the study: We measured reported collaborative activities, including research and reports as well as project implementation. We did not measure whether those activities ultimately reduced flooding or prevented damage.
Nor should differences between the regions become a ranking of adaptation success. The surveys used different recruitment strategies, took place in different years and captured snapshots of relationships that evolve over time.
Who has the capacity to participate?
The research identifies a core of well-informed, highly involved and well-resourced participants helping connect adaptation efforts across groups.
Those participants can provide valuable leadership. Their prominence also raises an equity concern. Organizations with fewer staff, less funding or limited technical expertise may struggle to participate in the relationships shaping regional decisions.
An invitation does not necessarily address those barriers. Managers could consider supporting participation through dedicated staff time, technical assistance or better coordination of overlapping meetings. These are practical applications of the findings, rather than interventions the study tested.
Ask what the partnership makes possible
For public officials and their partners, the research suggests four questions:
- Does this partnership connect participants with people who can make decisions or commit resources?
- Do participants have the time and expertise to follow through?
- Which organizations face barriers to participating meaningfully?
- What joint work has resulted from the relationships?
The answers can reveal whether the next step requires another connection, clearer responsibilities or support for an organization unable to contribute fully.
Coastal adaptation will continue to depend on flood maps, engineering designs and local knowledge. It also depends on organizations being able to connect those resources across boundaries. A useful partnership connects people with the authority, expertise and resources needed for shared work. Its value depends on what those connections make possible, whether that means exchanging essential information, coordinating plans or undertaking a project together.
What helps coastal communities turn flood planning into action?
Research from Hampton Roads and two other coastal regions examines the connections and organizational capacity behind collaborative adaptation.
Imagine a coastal city raising a road to keep traffic moving during floods. The project may help its residents, but its effects do not necessarily stop at the city line. Neighboring communities share transportation networks, waterways and the consequences of decisions about where water goes.
Preparing for rising seas requires organizations to work across those boundaries. Yet exchanging flood maps is different from developing a joint funding proposal or implementing a project together. What helps people make those greater commitments?
My colleagues Francesca Vantaggiato, Mark Lubell, Matthew C. Nowlin, Majid Shafiee-Jood and I explored that question in a study published in Public Administration Review. We compared sea-level rise adaptation in Hampton Roads, Virginia; the Charleston-area Tri-County region of South Carolina; and California’s San Francisco Bay Area.
Our analysis points to the importance of connections across planning groups, alongside the expertise, professional involvement and organizational support that help people work together. Recognizing flood risks is important. Having the capacity to respond together is a different challenge.
Why one organization cannot do it alone
Coastal adaptation involves local governments, state and federal agencies, nonprofits, researchers, consultants and other organizations. Each brings different responsibilities, resources and knowledge.
Researchers call this arrangement polycentric governance: a system with multiple centers of decision-making rather than one organization directing everything.
That structure creates opportunities to learn and pool resources. It also creates coordination problems. Before work can begin, an organization may need to identify partners, understand their priorities and negotiate responsibilities.
Planning groups and partnerships provide places for those interactions. Researchers refer to these as policy forums. They can include formal regional initiatives and less formal working groups where people exchange information and make decisions.
We looked beyond what happens within one partnership to examine people’s participation across the wider network of groups in each region.
Sharing information is different from committing to joint work
We analyzed surveys from 878 respondents in the San Francisco Bay Area, 152 in the Charleston-area region and 153 in Hampton Roads. The surveys were conducted in 2018, 2022 and 2023–2024, respectively, and asked about collaborative activities during the preceding year.
We grouped those activities into three categories:
- Information sharing: exchanging information with other organizations.
- Planning and development: activities such as joint planning, organizing public meetings and preparing funding proposals.
- Action-oriented collaboration: activities such as implementing projects, conducting joint research, publishing reports and signing formal agreements.
These categories involve different commitments. Sharing a document generally asks less of an organization than agreeing to fund, staff or deliver work with a partner.
Information sharing was the most common activity in all three regions. Formal agreements and joint litigation were much less common. Counting partnerships or meetings therefore provides an incomplete picture of what organizations are doing together.
Connections across groups matter
Across the combined analysis, participation in more planning groups was consistently associated with more collaboration, although the relationships varied by region and type of activity.
Repeated interaction offers a plausible explanation. Working across groups can help people learn whom to contact, understand other organizations’ responsibilities and identify opportunities that might otherwise be missed.
But the findings do not establish that attending another meeting causes collaboration. People already doing collaborative work may join more groups. The relationships can develop together.
The practical implication is to examine what those connections enable. Does a planning group help participants find technical expertise, identify funding partners or clarify who can make a decision? Does it connect work underway in one organization with related work elsewhere?
Creating additional committees without considering their purpose could add demands on participants’ time. The useful question is whether participation makes joint work more feasible.
Concern needs capacity behind it
When we analyzed the three regions together, people who felt better informed, whose jobs involved more sea-level rise work and who believed their organizations devoted more resources to adaptation generally reported more planning and action-oriented collaboration.
Concern about rising seas had less consistent relationships with the different activities. People who perceived greater agreement about the risks did not consistently report more collaboration.
Awareness and agreement still matter. But explaining a problem cannot, by itself, provide the staff time, knowledge or organizational support needed to address it.
An employee may recognize flood risks yet have little time to develop partnerships alongside other duties. An organization may support a regional proposal but lack the expertise to contribute. Those examples illustrate why willingness and capacity need to be considered together.
Hampton Roads complicates the picture
The relationship between resources and collaboration was not the same everywhere. In the Hampton Roads analysis, respondents who believed their organizations provided resources more adequate for adaptation reported fewer joint action-oriented activities.
One possible explanation is that organizations with sufficient resources can undertake some work independently. The study does not establish that explanation, and the result does not tell us whether independent or collaborative action was more effective.
This distinction matters throughout the study: We measured reported collaborative activities, including research and reports as well as project implementation. We did not measure whether those activities ultimately reduced flooding or prevented damage.
Nor should differences between the regions become a ranking of adaptation success. The surveys used different recruitment strategies, took place in different years and captured snapshots of relationships that evolve over time.
Who has the capacity to participate?
The research identifies a core of well-informed, highly involved and well-resourced participants helping connect adaptation efforts across groups.
Those participants can provide valuable leadership. Their prominence also raises an equity concern. Organizations with fewer staff, less funding or limited technical expertise may struggle to participate in the relationships shaping regional decisions.
An invitation does not necessarily address those barriers. Managers could consider supporting participation through dedicated staff time, technical assistance or better coordination of overlapping meetings. These are practical applications of the findings, rather than interventions the study tested.
Ask what the partnership makes possible
For public officials and their partners, the research suggests four questions:
- Does this partnership connect participants with people who can make decisions or commit resources?
- Do participants have the time and expertise to follow through?
- Which organizations face barriers to participating meaningfully?
- What joint work has resulted from the relationships?
The answers can reveal whether the next step requires another connection, clearer responsibilities or support for an organization unable to contribute fully.
Coastal adaptation will continue to depend on flood maps, engineering designs and local knowledge. It also depends on organizations being able to connect those resources across boundaries. A useful partnership connects people with the authority, expertise and resources needed for shared work. Its value depends on what those connections make possible, whether that means exchanging essential information, coordinating plans or undertaking a project together.