2022 NARRAGANSETT BAY CHALLENGE

Historic region with myriad harbors, coves, connected inland rivers and a robust industrial port legacy.

The Envision Resilience Challenge model, a coastal resilience initiative that connects academia, local leadership and community members, first launched in the spring of 2021 as the Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge, with the goal of inspiring coastal communities to envision innovative adaptations to sea level rise. Following the success of its inception on Nantucket, ReMain Nantucket is bringing the model to one more coastal region.

Narragansett Bay, which covers 147 miles, is the largest estuary in New England. It is home to numerous islands, harbors, ports and bodies of water including the Sakonnet River. Based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “high” sea level rise projections, the Bay will see nearly 4 feet of water above local mean sea level rise by 2060, more than 6 feet by 2080 and close to 9 feet by 2100. 

However, like Nantucket, the communities of Narragansett Bay are well aware of the threat they face from the impacts of climate change, particularly sea level rise. Over the last decade, Rhode Island universities, local and state officials and environmental organizations have made huge strides in coastal resilience preparedness and preparation.

The Envision Resilience Narragansett Bay Challenge, a spring 2022 design studio, is calling on multidisciplinary teams of graduate and undergraduate students to reimagine at-risk sites in the Narragansett Bay region through an iterative, design-driven approach. The six participating universities in the 2022 Envision Resilience Narragansett Bay Challenge are the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams University, Syracuse University, Northeastern University and the University of Florida. Students across disciplines―landscape architecture, environmental engineering, law, journalism and economics to name a few―will be tasked with identifying threats, researching possible solutions and proposing adaptive pathways forward for selected study areas within Providence, Wickford, Newport and the adjacent towns of Barrington, Bristol and Warren.