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Anamaria Bukvic

Assistant Professor
Anamaria Bukvic
207 Wallace Hall (0115)
295 West Campus Drive
Blacksburg, VA
24061
ana.bukvic@vt.edu
540-231-2941

Anamaria Bukvic is a social scientist with over 10 years of experience working on human dimensions of coastal issues such as adaptation, resilience, vulnerability, security, population displacement, and relocation. She utilizes qualitative and quantitative approaches to study societal problems related to flooding in coastal urban and rural areas, both nationally and internationally. Over the past eight years, Anamaria has published 29 peer-reviewed papers and secured over $4 million in funding for her research projects. Her external grants are sponsored by the Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the State of Virginia to study the impacts of chronic and episodic coastal flooding on coupled socio-ecological systems, coping capacity, resilience, migration, and social stability in coastal communities. She was a Fellow of the 2019 Early Career Innovators Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and co-organizer of Rotating Resilience Roundtables designed to facilitate collaboration among researchers and stakeholders on coastal resilience in Virginia. Anamaria served as an associate director of the Center for Coastal Studies at Virginia Tech from 2019 to 2024 and is currently a council member and chair of the Work Group on Research, Innovation, and Evaluation of the Climigration Network.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Climate change impacts, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction
  • Population displacement, resettlement, and relocation 

Education:

  • Ph.D. - Virginia Tech
  • MCP - School of Planning University of Cincinnati
  • M.Sci. - University of Cincinnati
  • BEng - University of Zagreb, Croatia
  • Climate Change & Societal Impacts (GEOG 4984/5984)
  • Introduction to Coastal Regions (GEOG 2114)
  • Introduction to Environmental Security (GEOG 2104)
  • Sophiya Gyanwali. 2024. M.S. Assessment of drivers of coastal relocation in the U.S. urban East Coast.
    Professor(s): Anamaria Bukvic
  • Jarek Campbell. 2023. M.S. Spatial Implications of Flood Exposure and Relocation Attitudes Among Older Populations in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
    Professor(s): Anamaria Bukvic
  • Margaret Crawford. 2022. M.S. The Social Cascades of Exposure to Flood Induced Natech events on Vulnerable Populations in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
    Professor(s): Anamaria Bukvic
  • Allison Mitchell. 2021. M.S. Impacts of Coastal Flooding on Watersheds in Hampton Roads, VA.
    Professor(s): Anamaria Bukvic

Mitigating flood risk on the Mississippi coast through equity-based stakeholder engagement.
Sponsor: National Fisheries and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) - National Coastal Resilience Fund
Investigator(s): Biber, P. (PI, USM), Wu, W. (USM), Deal, S. (USM), Posten, M., McGrury, D. (Mississippi Department of Marine Resources), Bukvic, A.
Amount: $294,400.56
2023-2025

Anticipating coastal population mobility: Path to maladaptation or sociopolitical stability.
Sponsor: Department of Defense (DoD) – Minerva Research Initiative.
Investigator(s): Bukvic, A. (PI), Beling, P. (VT), Ellison, T. (CCS). 
Amount: $1,998,337
2024-2027 

Coupled socio-ecological mobility in the coastal zone.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF) - Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES). 
Investigator(s): Bukvic, A. (PI), Allen, T. (ODU), Biber, P. (USM).
Amount: $592,027
2023-2026 

Changing coastlines, changing mobility: when staying in place is no longer an option.
Sponsor: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Early Career Innovators Program. 
Investigator(s): Bukvic, A. (PI).
Amount: $160,181
2019-2021 

Assessing the impacts of coastal flood-induced relocation on local jurisdictions.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF) - Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (HDBE) Program. 
Investigator(s): Bukvic, A. (PI), Irish, J., Shortridge, J. & Zobel C. (VT).
Amount: $325,000
2019-2021 

Human-centered computational framework for urban and community design of resilient coastal cities.
National Science Foundation (NSF) - CRISP Type 1/Collaborative Research.
Investigator(s): Rhode-Barbarigos L. (PI), Zuo, W., Chao, S. (UM) Saad, W., Bukvic, A. (VT).
Amount: $500,000
2016-2019. 

  • Bukvic, A., & Zobel, C. (2024). Flood-induced mobility in rural and urban coastal jurisdictions: a homeowner’s perspective. Climatic Change, 177(11), 164.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03821-3
  • Nourali, Z., Shortridge, J. E., Bukvic, A., Shao, Y., & Irish, J. L. (2024). Simulation of Flood-Induced Human Migration at the Municipal Scale: A Stochastic Agent-Based Model of Relocation Response to Coastal Flooding. Water, 16(2), 263.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/w16020263
  • Shortridge, J., Bukvic, A., Allen, T., Mitchell, M., & Goldstein, J., (2023). Characterizing climate socio-environmental tipping points in coastal communities: A conceptual framework for research and practice. Earth's Future, 12(7), e2023EF004123. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EF004123
  • Crawford, M., Bukvic, A., Rijal, S. & Gohlke J. (2023). The social cascades of exposure to flood induced Na-Tech events on vulnerable populations in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Natural Hazards, 119, 1633–1663. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-06148-x
  • Bukvic, A. & Borate, A. (2023). Identifying vulnerabilities of older residents in Miami-Dade County to episodic and chronic flooding. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 17(e465), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2023.133
  • Bukvic, A., Mitchell, A., Shao, Y. & Irish, J.L. (2023). Spatiotemporal implications of flooding on relocation risk in rural and urban coastal municipalities. Land Use Policy, 132, 106754. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106754 
  • Valle-Ramos, A., Alland, A., & Bukvic, A. (2023). Using machine learning to understand relocation drivers of coastal populations in response to flooding. AMS Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems, 2(2), 220054.
    https://doi.org/10.1175/AIES-D-22-0054.1
  • Bukvic, A. & Barnett, S. (2023). What drives urban coastal residents to consider relocation? Insights from the U.S. East Coast. Journal of Environmental Management, 325, 116429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116429 
  • Mitchell, A., Bukvic, A., Shao, Y., Irish, J., & McLaughlin, D. (2023). Toward collaborative adaptation: Assessing impacts of coastal flooding at the watershed scale. Environmental Management, 71(4), 741-754.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-022-01759-9 
  • Garland, A. Bukvic, A. & Maton, A. (2022). Perceptions of hazards, environmental change, and relocation in the North Slope Borough, Alaska. Climate Risk Management, 100460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2022.100460 
  • Bukvic, A., Mandi, K., Finn, D., Mayo, T., Wong-Parodi, G., … & Alland, J. (2022). Advancing interdisciplinary and convergent science for communities: Lessons learned through the NCAR Early-Career Faculty Innovator Program. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 103(11), E2513-E2532. 
    https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0265.1
  • Bukvic, A., Whittemore, A., Gonzales, J., & Wilhelmi, O. (2022). Understanding relocation in flood-prone coastal communities through the lens of place attachment. Journal of Applied Geography, 146, 102758.
  • Finn, D., Mandi, K., Bukvic, A., Davis, C., Haacker, R., … & T. Mayo (2022). Moving from interdisciplinary to convergent research across geoscience and social sciences: Challenges and strategies. Environmental Research Letters, 17(6), 061002. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7409 
  • Allen, T., Behr, J., Bukvic, A., Calder, R.S.D., … & Zinnert, J.C. (2021). Anticipating and adapting to the future impacts of climate change on the health, security and welfare of Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) communities in Southeastern USA. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 9(11),1196. 
    https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse9111196 
  • Bukvic, A., Borate, A., Hughes, S. Imburgia, S. Stiles, S., & Weaver R. (2021). Why context and scale matter: Exploring neighborhood level resilience in the City of Hampton, Virginia. Journal of Flood Risk Management 14(2), e12698. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12698 
  • Bukvic, A. & Borate, A. (2021). Acquisition and relocation in coastal communities: assessment of FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program 1989-2016. Environmental Hazards, 20(3), 279-299. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2020.1804819
  • Prince, B.C., Juran, L., Venkataramana, S., Bukvic, A., & MacDonald, M.C. (2020). A statistical and spatial analysis of water poverty using a modified Water Poverty Index. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 37(2), 339-356. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2020.1768829
  • Bukvic, A., Rohat, G., Apotsos, A., & de Sherbinin, A. (2020). A systematic review of coastal vulnerability mapping. Sustainability, Special Issue: Climate Risk and Vulnerability Mapping, 12(7), 2822. 
    https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072822
  • Bukvic, A., Biber, P., Barreto, M., & Roberts, S. (2019). Mobility: A research strategy for a new coastline. Coastal Management, 47(6), 611-620. https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2019.1669103
  • Bukvic, A. (2019). Facilitating stakeholders’ engagement in climate change relocation planning: The Coastal Relocation Leaf. Social Sciences, 8(6): 197.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8060197
  • de Sherbinin, A., Bukvic, A., Rohat, G., Gall, M., … & Zhang, S. (2019). Climate change vulnerability mapping: A systematic review and future prospects. WIRES Climate Change, 10(5), e600.  
    https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.600
  • Bukvic, A. & Harrald, J. (2019). Rural versus urban perspective on coastal flooding: the insights from the U.S. Mid-Atlantic communities. Climate Risk Management, 23, 7-18.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2018.10.004
  • Bukvic, A., Gohlke J., Borate, A., & Suggs, J. (2018). The health and wellbeing risk to older residents residing in flood-prone coastal communities. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Special Issue: Extreme Weather Events and Health, 15(12), 2900.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15122900
  • Bukvic, A., Zhu, H. Lavoie, R., & Becker, A. (2018). The role of proximity to waterfront in the relocation decision-making post-Hurricane Sandy. Ocean and Coastal Management, 154, 8-18.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2018.01.002 
  • Bukvic, A. (2017). Towards the sustainable climate change population movement: The Relocation Suitability Index. Climate and Development, 10(4), 307-320. 
    https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2017.1291407
  • Bukvic, A. & Owen, G. (2017). Attitudes towards relocation following Hurricane Sandy: should we stay or should we go? Disasters, 41(1), 101-123. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12186 
  • Bukvic, A. (2015). Identifying Gaps and Inconsistencies in the Use of Relocation Rhetoric: A Prerequisite for Sound Relocation Policy and Planning. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 20(7), pp. 1203-1209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-013-9532-5
  • Bukvic, A., Smith, A., Zhang, A. (2015). Evaluating Drivers of Coastal Relocation in Hurricane Sandy Affected Communities. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 13, 215-228.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2015.06.008
  • Bukvic, A. (2015). Integrated Framework for the Relocation Potential Assessment of Coastal Communities (RPACC): Application to Hurricane-Sandy Affected Areas. Environment, Systems, and Decisions, 35(2), 264-278. 
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-015-9546-5
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