Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning Kelsea Best was featured in Ohio State News’ “In coastal communities, sea level rise may leave some isolated.” The article features Best’s recent publication “Demographics and risk of isolation due to sea level rise in the United States” in Nature Communication.

Notably, because people need access to essential places like grocery stores, public schools, hospitals and fire stations, Best and her colleagues argue that an inability to reach these places impacts individuals just as negatively as if they were living in inundated homes themselves, and should be documented as such. 

Most importantly, their results expose one of the main reasons for these vast differences in risk: A group’s risk of isolation is intimately entwined with specific road networks and where vital services are located in relation to where affected individuals reside. 

“The effects of climate change are going to be further reaching and more cascading than might be directly obvious, and those effects are not going to be felt equitably,” said Best. “So we need to be thinking about those populations most at risk from the beginning and develop policies to support them.”