This is episode 3 in our series on climate change and features a conversation with Dr. Cristina Poleacovschi, assistant professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department at Iowa State University. She discusses infrastructure inequities that are exposed because of climate change and how they affect refugees and other vulnerable and marginalized populations.

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Anya Morozov:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to From the Front Row. When we think about climate change, it’s important to talk about the solutions to reduce carbon emissions. However, we should also recognize that some of climate change’s effects may be unavoidable. Extreme weather events, changes to temperatures, and changes in precipitation worldwide already have the potential to create new challenges for a lot of people. So along with solutions to prevent worse outcomes, we need to understand the changes that are likely going to happen and learn how we might adapt in a way that is equitable.

I’m Anya Morozov, and if this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and outside the field of public health. Today, I’m here with Dr. Cristina Poleacovschi. Dr. Poleacovschi is an assistant professor in the Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering Department at Iowa State University. She researches a wide variety of topics including infrastructure inequities and refugees.

While she is in an engineering department, much of her research actually has a social focus. We’re going to be discussing this and much more in today’s episode. Welcome to the show, Dr. Poleacovschi.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Thank you for having me today.

Anya Morozov:

So before we get into talking about climate change and refugees and infrastructure, can you walk us through your background? How did you become an engineering professor and what made you choose your area of focus?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah. So the idea of becoming an engineer spark to me around high school when I excelled in math and that’s when I decided that I also want to try out to go to the United States for one year as an exchange student. At that time my host dad in Alabama, he was engineer and I thought that it could be an interesting profession by seeing how he works, the types of project that he works. However, I had to choose between different types of engineering fields and at that time I felt that construction engineering was a field that has more social managerial aspects that always interested me. So that’s how I joined construction engineering.

Anya Morozov:

So moving on to the topic of today’s episode. It’s clear that in many places there are probably going to be more frequent natural disasters that result from climate change. So what are some ways that places can adapt their infrastructure to be ready for these challenges?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah, that’s an excellent question. I emphasize two main paths for climate change adaptation, especially when it comes to infrastructure and housing. The first one is this idea of front end planning, and what is front end planning? It’s starting to realize that climate change is a part of our lives now and it needs to be addressed now. We need to put it in our plan and design processes, even financial risk very early on when we even start with idea generation. Historically we have not done that, right? Historically, all the designs that we see are following the codes, and some of those codes are adapted to some hazards. But they’re really not adapted to the severity or the frequency of the natural hazards we see these days. This is a usual, right? One way to address it is really to make climate change a topic that is not a separate idea to all the processes that we see in engineering. But it’s present from early on and present within each phase of an engineering project and that requires a paradigm shift in engineering, which is quite difficult.

Incorporating climate change into our processes requires putting more finances towards having the ability, putting the resources. Right? Putting the right stakeholders at the table, even changing the engineering education so it focuses on those topics from early on in this engineering education. That is one of the challenges. I think at the community level, one way that this front end planning can happen is through this idea of hazard mitigation planning and climate change adaptation planning. A lot of communities already have hazard mitigation plans. They have climate change adaptation plans, especially those communities that are increasingly affected by climate change. However, one important aspect in those plans is that sometimes those plans are done well and sometimes I think they could be improved. One way to improve them is that those plans really need to be done not by a single person, by two people, they really need to be done collaboratively. That is one of the ideas I emphasize in my work, the best outcomes, the better climate change of the patient, natural hazard risk aversion can be done only through collaborative effort.

It’s very difficult, a lot of actors who sit at the table when some of those plans are being made they have different type of goals. They have different ideas of how this type of planning will be done. They also have different desire to even do this planning, right? Some may not see the immediacy and the urgency of creating this plan and taking action. Some may see a huge urgency to do them right away and they see the risk of climate change vividly in their backyard. Right? To create those partnerships, I think there has to be both vertical and horizontal integration where people from different sectors can come together. Also, the local stakeholders, the regional, the state stakeholders can collaborate and really understand what their goals and priorities are and what are some of the action planning that they have in place. Even if they have operational constraints, which that is unavoidable in any situation. One aspect that I want to emphasize in this collaborative effort is the importance of civic society and communities.

Because what happens a lot of time is that we have the people who are the stakeholders who have more power and resources make these decisions. But they don’t do it in collaboration with the civil society and community. So my advice is to make sure that any hazard mitigation planning, any climate change of the patient planning is being done with the help of the civic society and communities and this does not have to be complicated in practice. It can be as easily as organizing some meetings with the local communities and civic society. Maybe organizing a semesterly workshop where some stakeholders get together to talk about how are they adapting to climate change. What have they done on a semesterly basis to do so? What are their goals in the future? And how we can cross collaborate to achieve common goals together, right? Just simple face-to-face meetings and creating partnerships and collaborations to increase the visibility of individual efforts could help achieve some of those goals. Why also the civic society and community is important to be incorporated in this collaborative effort is because the most unfortunately catastrophic issues occur among those vulnerable communities.

Whenever we do not incorporate their voices, we see that any recovery, any response efforts, they do not achieve their intended goals. Which is a problem that we see not only in Iowa, we also see it across the United States.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. I really like your focus on the collaboration. That’s something that we definitely talk about a lot in the College of Public Health. Because-

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah, exactly. So one example I want to give, we actually conducted the study. It was I would say smaller level study that we did in Midwest. We compared two micropolitan cities. The study didn’t focus on climate change or natural hazards, but it focuses on the economic resilience. So we evaluated how one micropolitan managed to actually overcome an economic shock when basically they lost the large portion of their jobs in their community. Versus another micropolitan who basically did not manage to overcome that particular economic shock and guess what we found? Through interviews and surveys, we actually saw that the resilient micropolitan city in Iowa was able to overcome this job losses. Only because their partners in the communities collaborated very well in terms of public and private partnerships. Okay? So the public and the private sectors really partnered well over the years to make sure that they’re both contributing to each side and they are both benefiting from whatever individual goals they have and that partnership has let them really grow over time.

While the vulnerable micropolitan city, we saw a lot of siloed partners in their community and we did not see good collaboration in terms of the public private partnerships. That was such an interesting study to empirically show that indeed partnerships in a community are very important.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. That’s a really interesting result and definitely I think even though the study wasn’t particularly relevant to climate change. The idea that economic shocks could be caused by climate change in the future definitely is in the realm of possibility, I’d think. Yeah. I think also the idea that kind of forming partnerships and breaking down silos in times of relative calm can kind of help you in those times of more challenge.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Exactly. I think that’s a good point.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. So I feel like you’ve maybe touched on this a little bit, but I know some of your research also focuses on infrastructure and equities. So can you talk about what exactly infrastructure inequities are and how they impact people’s health?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah, that’s a great question. Infrastructure inequities is quite a new term that is increasingly of the interest in the engineering community. It basically means that the infrastructure we’re designing is not planned and is not benefiting equally the marginalized communities in our society. This is seen across all infrastructure types. If you look at the water quality, if you look at the energy efficiency of buildings. The type of housing being provided, the type of transportation being provided, who has electricity issues, those challenges impact marginalized communities way worse than those privileged communities. Okay? So this is seen in our research across so many communities in the United States and I want to point out, especially with my research in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has been hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and now by Fiona recently, right? What we see in Puerto Rico is that we see inequities in terms of the housing provided to low income communities and housing reconstruction challenges that low income communities are experiencing post disaster.

So for example, across the island there’s numerous people that have not received FEMA system just because they did not have land tenure and this is because FEMA system the way it’s designed. They really require a title from individual households in order to be qualified for this type of assistance. Historically, the way that Puerto Rico has created this title system, many of these communities did not really have a formal title. They would just basically inherit their houses from their family over the years and it would be verbally kind of done. Right now it’s a huge challenge and it reinforces existing inequities because if you do not receive FEMA assistance, you cannot rebuild. But you cannot rebuild because you don’t have a land title, so this is going to be really the same issue next time. Unfortunately you see the same, these challenges are particularly emphasized in marginalized communities. So our research, we did surveys across the island and what we found is that those with lower level of education, those who are low income, are particularly affected by this issue.

What this research is emphasizing is that there’s all this resources that are available maybe at the federal level or at the state level and they come with this top down approach. So what happens in that case is that it’s not really incorporating the voices of the vulnerable communities. What can be done better is for all the projects, any policy in terms of climate change, adaptation, engineering. Projects that are rebuilding up for disasters are more aware of some of these challenges and really start to create indicators and decision making tools to incorporate some solutions to addressing some of these inequities. This is not the only project. I could give you examples of numerous projects across the state and other places where this has been an issue. The same issue in Puerto Rico we see with the water quality for example. We see that water quality is quite distrusting in Puerto Rico, and some of these issues come from the existing water system that is in Puerto Rico and unfortunately it affects people’s health in very different and negative ways.

So for example, my research in Puerto Rico shows that those people who have water service disruptions. Those people who do not have access to a tap, a water source, they’re more likely to have anxiety and depression and this is concerning considering that the current water system in Puerto Rico has not improved. Right? So this is an example where water and infrastructure inequities particularly affect marginalized communities. To address them, the public really needs to be aware that this infrastructure challenges have social impacts and I think this is where my goal and my work becomes important. Is because it’s bridging these two very different disciplines with the idea that an increasing awareness in how infrastructure inequities are represented in our society and their effect on people’s social, mental health, physical health and other quality of life indicators become more visible.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. I really like how you stated that infrastructure challenges have social impacts, because sometimes that might not always be the first connection that people make. Yeah. I’d thought about the physical impacts of water disruptions, but I had no idea about anxiety and depression.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

It’s a big issue. I think what’s unique about the study we’re doing there, we’re not only looking at their experiences with water challenges or what do we call it, water insecurity, but we also look at the actual water quality. So we have water quality just like the microbiological water quality and then chemical water quality and then we combine those two variables with the water insecurity. We also control for diverse demographics in Puerto Rico, and then we also look how those as a group of variables, group of factors that can affect mental health kind of work together and they all matter. What is interesting, we see that the actual water quality matter, the water insecurity or the experiences with water disruptions, having access to tap water and so on and also demographics. Again, we do not see that these issues affect people similarly. We see large inequities across socioeconomic demographics and again hopefully this type of research increases the visibility that something needs to be done and that people are suffering.

As we are seeing more repetitive disasters occurring in Puerto Rico, the situation is not getting better. It’s only getting worse and that is a huge risk and concern for Puerto Rican people.

Anya Morozov:

So moving from infrastructure inequities to refugees and displaced people. How might the impacts of climate change increase the number of refugees and displace people worldwide?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

So this has already shown as a major concern. I don’t know the exact statistics on the top of my head, but I do know that it is increasing. I know that these patterns are being seen across the globe, climate change has started to affect everyone and again it doesn’t affect everyone equally. If we look specifically in the United States where most of my work is being done, Alaskan native communities for example. They’re currently experiencing storms that they have not seen before, they also see water rise especially to the coastal communities and the communities that are located across rivers. This vulnerability is putting these communities to make a decision should we stay or should we leave? Over time unfortunately that question does not exist anymore because they’re in a situation where they really have to leave. So at home here in United States, we see this situation already affecting Alaska native communities and people having to leave their homes and their villages to build a new village and let’s say a little bit farther away from the coast or from the river.

The consequences of such a change on this community is quite high and I was just there in August and we were in Bethel doing a workshop and some of the communities. The way that they described the consequences of them moving their house and moving their fish camps away from where they’ve been there for decades was just heartbreaking. People talked about their memories and their culture and how they would do this activity, how they would play with these kids here and now it felt like this shaky voices that are feeling that they’re losing what made them happy before and it was just heartbreaking to hear. This is just an example of what is happening in many places, not only in the Arctic. The climate refugees is a concept that is increasingly starting to be used to people that are leaving their places to move to another state, to another country because of the climate issues and we see it in Europe, we see an increase in the refugees. Some of them are displaced by war, but in some of the cases there is research that shows many of those wars occur because of climate change.

So yes, this is on the rise and unfortunately the current structures of resettlement that we have in place in many of the countries that are welcoming refugees are not very strong. There needs to be a push to increase the awareness again to this idea that climate is a part of every process we have in our society, and we all need to invest in resources. New policies and new practices, new educational materials to make this as present as possible.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. I think awareness is definitely the first step to getting some of those larger changes in place. So you mentioned a little bit just the heartbreak of leaving behind your home. Can you talk about some other challenges that refugees face once they become displaced?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah. That’s a great question and we wrote actually a paper that well describes these challenges in the case study of Syrian refugees in Europe. So this was a paper I wrote together with Dr. Scott [inaudible 00:19:59] and in that paper we talk about this idea of integration. People like to use this concept of integration when it comes to refugees because it’s a multidimensional. So when we think about refugees coming to the United States let’s say or to Europe, they are adapting to multiple spheres. Right? It’s not only sufficient for them to just have a good housing and that’s it. Right? They have to have employment, they have to have housing, they have to have education, they have to have good health, access to affordable health and they also need to integrate and create bonds with the society and local community. They also will learn a new language in many instances and they also have to have the rights and a citizenship that allows them to have access to some of this other resources.

So to do that, there’s so many parts of the community that needs to provide adequate and affordable conditions to get that access. So for example, in terms of the housing there’s many challenges and I could talk about multiple of them. But I want to emphasize housing because it’s particular of interest in my research. So housing, a lot of times there’s two types of housing. There’s temporary housing, there’s permanent housing and when the refugees come to a country, a lot of times they’re provided temporary housing. Which sometimes is substandard, it does not provide the adequate conditions and it also may not be located in a good location where refugees could get access to all these other spheres that I’ve just described. Unfortunately, temporary housing could be permanent housing for refugees for a long time. There is some research that’s shown that on average temporary housing for refugees worldwide could be like 17 years, which that is concerning. Right?

You would think that those refugee camps are there for a year or two and then the refugees move to a permanent housing. Globally that’s not actually the case, at least from an average perspective. So that is an issue, the second thing is the permanent housing. For example in Europe, many Syrian refugees described issues of discrimination when trying to find permanent housing. In Iowa, some of our new research focusing on the housing refugees here, and what we’re finding so far by talking about our partners is that there’s big challenges when it comes to finding the housing that has the adequate conditions. Size is a big issue because some of the refugee families come in a larger numbers and then also I envision the location could be also a challenge. Working also with landlords who are willing to understand some of the limitations that refugees have when applying and putting their credit history, for example which they will not have at the time of the application and so on. This provides you an overview of the housing.

At the same time, they experience challenges in all other spheres when it comes to for example obtaining similar rights and the application systems. So gaining employment and so on, and all these spheres are interdependent. What I think is important to do is whenever refugees are resettled is for the government to provide the resources in a way that acknowledge the importance of all these integration spheres that I just discussed and allocating sufficient resources for all of them. So there is a well rounded integration process which in my opinion could be more successful if well implemented.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. I’ve heard the kind of concept of if you need social assistance, a lot of times you have to apply for separate things in each of those dimensions of housing and healthcare and education. That just adds a whole lot of barriers when you have to do separate applications that might have different kind of eligibility requirements and things. So creating a more integrative model for that could definitely be helpful and just making sure that the entire community is engaged to support refugees coming into the community.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yep, exactly.

Anya Morozov:

So related to that, you do a lot of work around refugees and one of the more recent things is an app that you’re developing. So can you talk about what that app that you and your team are developing is?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah. So we have not developed the app just yet, but this is in ID information. We got the planning grant from National Science Foundation to put together a team that would want to think about how do we improve this housing infrastructure conditions for refugees and particularly focusing on Ukrainian refugees. One of the idea is to create an app where we create the means for a Photovoice activity. So Photovoice is a methodology that is used in anthropology. It’s basically trying to capture the cultural meaning behind different processes, different items for people and using pictures to do so. A picture says a thousand words kind of meaning, right? So asking for example, refugees to take pictures around of things that maybe provide positive or negative sentiments. Trying to see how exactly the built environment affects them and using those pictures as the mean to gain that understanding. But what exactly this would look like in practice, this would look like a photo mapping activity where basically the refugees would take pictures around their built environment.

They would be asked about their positive negative sentiments, but on the other side all these pictures come into… Imported kind of into a map format. So for example, the map of let’s say the city of Chicago where a lot of Ukrainian refugees are currently resettling. We would see on the other side maybe across different regions of Chicago, how are those positive and negative sentiments look like and why? Right? So it would kind of be an aggregate for a planner or for decision makers. To understand how this certain features in the building environment affect more people positively or negatively and it kind of provides a quick way for decision makers to get that understanding. Right? To incorporate the voices of the refugees. Again, this goes back to the initial conversation we had at the start of this interview. Where incorporating community voices is very important and I think this is one way to do it, especially considering that pictures in my opinion they tap into also the sentiments of the decision makers and they provide more meaning.

Somebody complaining about their road is not fixed and picking up the phone and it never gets to the decision makers. So it’s kind of like a tool to bridge decision makers or people who are planners or people who are engineers to understand the needs of the vulnerable communities in their environment and hopefully take those considerations seriously and make some changes.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah. That seems like a really great way to do just that, kind of breakdown the barriers between the planners and the decision makers and the refugee communities. I know you mentioned that you can do that through meetings and things as well. But those do come with a lot of scheduling challenges and things, so this would be a very direct way to make that connection on top of maybe some of those other more involved processes.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Exactly. I think it’s also could be an easy way on both sides as you say in terms of the time commitment. But I also think it uses strategies that talk the culture of both groups, and hopefully that convergence of that hopefully could increase the use and the impact of what this app is trying to achieve.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah, definitely. As you said, pictures speak 1000 words.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yes, exactly.

Anya Morozov:

So the idea for this app, my understanding is it kind of came from the current war in Ukraine and the refugees that are coming across the globe into Iowa because of that. Do you think the app can also be modified to address climate refugees and displaced people?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yes. I think the idea behind this app is to create a prototype platform that can be used in probably any context. In fact, our idea is to test it with the Korean refugees and another group. I think we’ll start with the refugees because I think they usually experience quite significant issues when it comes to infrastructure housing and then it could be interesting to validate it with another group. I don’t foresee any challenges in making this app more generalizable because I think the idea here is not particular to refugees. It’s just a communication tool for those who have vulnerabilities to talk in a language that translates to some decision makers, like planners and engineers and maybe government agencies as well.

Anya Morozov:

Yeah, that is really true. I didn’t think about that when I was first kind of reading about the app. But you’re right, it doesn’t even have to be refugees necessarily.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Exactly.

Anya Morozov:

What was one thing you thought you knew but were later wrong about?

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Yeah. So one interesting thing that I reflected on recently, especially working with vulnerable communities is this idea that the right marginalized communities are vulnerable. A lot of times maybe we think that they’re weaker or they need help or things like this. We assign this label of vulnerability, but not giving them a lot of agency and I didn’t like that. So over times what I realized by working with this community is that these communities are very strong, they have high level of agency and their resilience in the amount of effort they do to go through their struggles and their day is impressive. So I thought that was an interesting perspective and mind shift for me that happened over time, the more I communicate and talk to with communities.

Anya Morozov:

Well, thank you for sharing that and for sharing all of your knowledge today. I know we’re out of time, but I really appreciate everything that you shared. I wish we could keep talking but thank you so much.

Cristina Poleacovschi:

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me Anya today and I hope you have a good one.

Anya Morozov:

That’s it for our episode this week. Big thanks to Dr. Cristina Poleacovschi for coming on with us today. This episode was hosted, written, edited and produced by Anya Morozov. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook and our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast. Please share it with your colleagues, friends or anyone interested in public health. Have a question or suggestion for our team? You can always reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode was brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.