Eric Tate Awarded €2.5 Million ERC Synergy Grant for Research on Flooding and Social Vulnerability

As climate change increases rainfall intensity and urbanization patterns divert more water into rivers, damage to local communities has intensified. The result has left a group of researchers to question whether and when people will reach a point at which their repeated efforts to invest in flood adaptation are no longer worth it. Eric Tate, a professor of public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, will be studying such household and community decisions thanks to a Synergy Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC).

The funding will support research into whether households facing repeated flood risk decide to make adaptations, such as buying flood insurance, floodproofing their homes, or eventually leaving the area altogether. The combined expertise of the project’s principal investigators enables them to tackle “ambitious research problems” beyond the scope of a single scholar or lab, according to the ERC.

Tate is partnering with three international colleagues to examine multiple areas of flood research and adaptation limits. Paul Bates at the University of Bristol in England will focus on physical flood modeling, Heidi Kreibich in Germany will examine how buildings respond to flooding, and Jeroen Aerts in the Netherlands will study how households make decisions under flood risks. Each partner was awarded 2.5 million euros over the course of six years to collaborate on their studies. At Princeton, Tate will focus on modeling and mapping social vulnerabilities and how they affect the ability of households to adapt.

“A lot of what I’m working on is how these social factors interact with other challenges, in how people make decisions, because we don’t have a good understanding of how social barriers actually affect decision making when it comes to flood adaptation,” Tate said.

Traditionally, flood research has couched household choices through an economic or behavioral lens, according to Tate, but these models often ignore the real-world constraints that people face.

“People may intend to adapt to keep their families and homes safe, but many may lack the resources or capacity to do it,” he said, citing other factors such as age, gender, discrimination, and homeownership.

If researchers can better identify where and when adaptation limits are likely to be reached, policymakers may be better positioned to decide where resilience investments make the most sense.

“We'll know the geographies; we'll have an idea of the time frames,” said Tate, which means policymakers “will have information to guide planning and prioritization in places that are likely to hit these adaptation limits.”

Eric Tate, Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs, speaks on a panel during the 2025 SAOC Spring Symposium.

Photo credit: Sameer A. Khan / Fotobuddy