Peizhe Li

Bio

Advisor and Program

Erin Seekamp and Yu-Fai Leung
Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, NC State University

About

My research project in SE CASC focuses on integrating community members’ values and preferences into climate adaptation planning for historic buildings at Cape Lookout National Seashore. Using a participatory approach, I enhance the Optimal Preservation (OptiPres) Model by incorporating structure-specific vulnerability metrics, stochastic storm impacts, and interest-holders-informed priorities. By treating cultural resources as community anchors, the project emphasizes a place-centered perspective that foregrounds the social and cultural significance of cultural resources. Through community workshops, surveys, and modeling, I co-produce adaptation pathways that reflect both local priorities and long-term sustainability. My research also explores the application of Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) strategies to assess trade-offs and inform actionable decisions for managers. Ultimately, this project contributes a value-based, decision-support framework to cultural resource stewardship, advancing interdisciplinary planning under compounding threats like recurrent flooding and intensifying storms in coastal settings.

Research Interests

My research project in SE CASC advances the Optimal Preservation (OptiPres) Model in two historic districts at Cape Lookout National Seashore by integrating interest-holders’ values and preferences into climate adaptation planning. Through an iterative public participatory process, we gathered diverse perspectives on the cultural significance of historic structures, preferences of adaptation strategies, and trade-offs under climate uncertainty. These insights are to be integrated into a multi-objective optimization framework to co-produce transparent, transferable, and place-based adaptation decisions that reflect community values to support cultural resources stewardship.