Climate change and seismic resilience: Key considerations for Alaska’s infrastructure and built environment

in community and international development cases elsewhere [73, 77, 82]. Different construc- tion approaches can have significant impacts on longer-term adaptive capacity, including local livelihoods, skill development, ecological knowledge, land tenure, cultural identity, and sense of place; norms of reciprocity, cooperation, and social aid; and sustainability of local resource use [73, 77, 83]. Community-based research methods could help articulate community values, iden- tify resilience priorities, establish participatory and community-collaborative research methods, and identify and pursue shared goals [82, 84–86]. Indigenous and vernacular architectures and settlement patterns are often adapted to local environmental hazards and can sometimes be integrated with contemporary building techniques [73, 87, 88]. Related factors such as neigh- borhood density, architectural and landscape design, mixed-use development, and pedestrian and transit infrastructure also have powerful impacts on community resilience, such as by improving informal communications, mutual aid, upward economic mobility, and broad civic engagement [75]. Such decisions also have major climate change mitigation potential, without which public budgets will be depleted by escalating costs of environmental disaster. Conclusions In this exploratory research, interviews and workshop contributors emphasized challenges posed by earthquake hazards and climate change for Alaska’s built environment, both from an engineering perspective and a coupled human-environment perspective. The array of con-

cerns includes cumulative impacts of cascading seismic and climate events, such as destabiliza- tion of soils, sparse and diverse settlements spread across large distances, limited lifeline infrastructure and social networks, and variation in resource access and norms of decision making. Participants provided a clear and supported argument for the importance of consider- ing permafrost thaw in seismic performance. Some proposed engineering solutions and miti- gation strategies to address these risks and emphasized the potential role of building codes for public safety in relation to permafrost thaw and seismic performance. Others noted that build- ing practices take place in complex human-environment decision contexts, which vary sub- stantially over space and time, therefore meriting community-based approaches to identify policy gaps, opportunities, and limitations. This suggests that economic and social benefits can result from the consideration of permafrost thaw by engineers in relation to seismic perfor- mance of built infrastructure, including attention to building foundations and development of locally-appropriate building practices. Such actions are more likely to be effective and publicly supported if undertaken using methods that engage fully with a broad diversity of interests and knowledge bases, both in the framing of problems and their potential solutions. Supporting information S1 File. Inclusivity in global research. (DOCX) Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the workshop and interview participants, without whom this

research would not have been possible. Thanks to undergraduate researchers, Michael Harris and Susan Strickland, for assisting with the interviews and data analysis. Author Contributions Conceptualization: Matthew M. Turner, Majid Ghayoomi, Katharine Duderstadt, Jennifer Brewer, Alexander Kholodov. PLOS ONE Climate change and seismic resilience: Key considerations for Alaska’s infrastructure and built environment PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292320 October 18, 2023 12 / 17