A Community Walk Through Warren’s Resilience Efforts

Tucked between the Warren, Barrington, and Palmer Rivers, the town of Warren sits just above the tide and is vulnerable to flooding from sea level rise and storm events. In November 2025, coastal experts, researchers, and community members led a walking tour of Warren. The walk highlighted that the challenges communities face in building their resilience are not only technical but also social—planners and scientists need to understand community history and values as much as sea level rise projections. 

Picture of flooding from a king tide on Market Street in Warren, adjacent to the entrance of Jamiel’s Park. Picture uploaded to MyCoast by K. Michaud, 2023.

Stage three of Jamiel’s Park Remediation project aims to reduce coastal erosion and flooding by installing a living shoreline—a nature-based strategy to reduce coastal erosion and flooding adjacent to Belcher’s Cove. 

From Jamiel’s Park, the group continued to Market Street to observe the king tide flooding firsthand, where Casey Tremper, Rhode Island Sea Grant coastal project manager, pointed to one simple way residents can support local resilience efforts: the MyCoast app. By photographing storms and extreme tidal flooding and uploading their images to the MyCoast app, volunteers help build a visual record of inundation.

Tremper described it as a “powerful tool,” explaining that these photos help scientists at URI and other universities validate their models and improve projections of future sea level rise. 

Jason Jaacks, URI Associate Professor and award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and multimedia journalist, discusses “Between Moon Tides,” his documentary that details efforts in Warren to help prevent the extinction of the saltmarsh sparrow. 

The tour progressed to Tourister Mill, where Eliza Berry, Rhode Island Sea Grant project manager, and Mehrshad Amini, URI assistant professor for civil and environmental/ocean engineering, introduced two resilience projects for Warren. A URI research project aims to work on drainage mapping, groundwater modeling, infrastructure risk, and economic impacts of flooding and salinization while gathering residents’ input on priorities.

Berry noted that “we’ll continue to have opportunities to engage the public and get input on” these projects in Warren. 

Amini, left, talks to walk participants about his upcoming project “Multi-hazard Structural Health Monitoring, Bridging Sensing, Data Analytics, and Digital Twin Systems” for the Route 114 Warren bridge.

With a view of the bridge connecting Warren and Barrington, Amini explained that this everyday crossing has one of the highest flood risk scores in the state. Amini is leading a proposed project to better understand how sea level rise and coastal inundation threaten structures like this one by installing equipment that will monitor the water level and structural performance of the bridge. 

These projects, all grounded in community engagement, represent the collective effort of scientists, local leaders, and residents working towards a safer future. 

This walk was part of community engagement on shoreline access and Warren resilience efforts, particularly an NSF-funded project led by URI Professor Emi Uchida with outreach support provided by Rhode Island Sea Grant’s Eliza Berry.

– Sophia Milman, Rhode Island Sea Grant Communications Intern