About

Melanie McDermott, Ph.D., is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, located within the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. Her role involves conducting research related to human ecology, with a focus on environmental policy, institutions, and behavior. She is associated with Rutgers' New Brunswick campus and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Her work contributes to understanding the human dimensions of environmental change, supporting academic programs and initiatives aimed at sustainability, environmental policy, and science communication. As part of her professional responsibilities, she engages in research activities that inform policy and practice in environmental and human ecology fields, supporting Rutgers' mission of research, education, and community service.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Engineering
• Economics
• Transport engineering
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Environmental health
• Electrical engineering
• Marketing
• Environmental economics
• Public economics
• Automotive engineering
• Mathematics
• Physics

Selected publications

• Toward just and equitable mobility: Socioeconomic and perceptual barriers for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in the United States

  Energy and Climate Change · 2024 · 22 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Transport engineering
  • Business

  Based on a large-scale public survey, we identify and quantify the significance of key factors associated with the deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. Our results indicate that individual characteristics, such as income, age, region, and single vs. multi-family housing type can significantly affect electric vehicle purchase preferences, especially those concerning overnight charging and perceptions of benefits and barriers. Moreover, our results challenge earlier findings in the literature by showing how certain elements, such as expected electric driving range, certain travel behaviors (e.g., driving distance, destination types), the most common perceived benefits (e.g., cleaner air) or barriers (e.g., reliability concerns), and preferred location for public charging seem to not vary much or at all with the socioeconomic, demographic, and geographical variables examined in this study. We conclude with the implications for policies to advance equitable vehicle electrification. Our findings underscore the importance of lower-cost models of electric vehicles, home and public charging access, charging infrastructure planning, more integrated analysis of interlinked housing and transportation needs and solutions, the availability of alternative transportation modes, and the potential role of gas stations for electric vehicles. We encourage others to build on these results and have shared our complete survey instrument as an added contribution.

  PublisherDOI

• Does electric mobility display racial or income disparities? Quantifying inequality in the distribution of electric vehicle adoption and charging infrastructure in the United States

  Applied Energy · 2024 · 19 citations

  • Business
  • Automotive engineering
  • Economics

  Based on high-resolution spatial and temporal analysis, we quantify and evaluate the equality of plug-in electric vehicle adoption and public charging infrastructure deployment in the United States, examining current and historical trends, as well as racial and income-based disparities. Our results show that the current and historical distribution of conventional vehicle ownership and gas stations shows much more equality, in contrast to electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. With regards to the distribution of electric vehicle adoption, the more electrified vehicle technology is adopted, the more significant income inequality becomes, on a national scale. Over the last several years, almost all states ameliorated income and racial/ethnic inequality for plug-in electric vehicle adoption, but that is not the case for charging infrastructure. The income inequality of the distribution of nationwide charging infrastructure is three times larger than that of gas stations. Individual states, as well as some of the largest urbanized areas, demonstrate a wide range of inequality associated with income and race/ethnicity. There is a need to better understand what drives this significant spatial heterogeneity, as it implies that additional strategies tailored to local and regional contexts may be necessary to achieve more equal distribution of infrastructure as electric vehicles become common beyond early adopters. Improving consistency and coordination of development of charging infrastructure across different states/regions would likely benefit inter-state travelers. • Documents historic inequality of electric vehicle infrastructure. • Illustrates significant spatial variation across different cities and states. • Proposes novel metrics such as Racial Gap Index to characterize inequality. • Develops equity strategies tailored to local and regional contexts. • Evidences a need for more coordinated inter-state charging infrastructure across the country.

  PublisherDOI

• 11. Local Responses to Hurricane Sandy: Heterogeneous Experiences and Mismatches with Federal Policy

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2019-12-31 · 3 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Taking Chances

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2019-08-22 · 14 citations

  book

  Humanity is deeply committed to living along the world’s shores, but a catastrophic storm like Sandy—which took hundreds of lives and caused many billions of dollars in damages—shines a bright light at how costly and vulnerable life on a shoreline can be. Taking Chances offers a wide-ranging exploration of the diverse challenges of Sandy and asks if this massive event will really change how coastal living and development is managed. Bringing together leading researchers—including biologists, urban planners, utilities experts, and climatologists, among others— Taking Chances illuminates reactions to the dangers revealed by Sandy. Focusing on New Jersey, New York, and other hard-hit areas, the contributors explore whether Hurricane Sandy has indeed transformed our perceptions of coastal hazards, if we have made radically new plans in response to Sandy, and what we think should be done over the long run to improve coastal resilience. Surprisingly, one essay notes that while a large majority of New Jerseyans identified Sandy with climate change and favored carefully assessing the likelihood of damage from future storms before rebuilding the Shore, their political leaders quickly poured millions into reconstruction. Indeed, much here is disquieting. One contributor points out that investors scared off from further investments on the shore are quickly replaced by new investors, sustaining or increasing the overall human exposure to risk. Likewise, a study of the Gowanus Canal area of Brooklyn shows that, even after Sandy swamped the area with toxic flood waters, plans to convert abandoned industrial lots around the canal into high-density condominiums went on undeterred. By contrast, utilities, emergency officials, and others who routinely make long-term plans have changed operations in response to the storm, and provide examples of adaptation in the face of climate change. Will Sandy be a tipping point in coastal policy debates—or simply dismissed as a once-in-a-century anomaly? This thought-provoking collection of essays in Taking Chances makes an important contribution to this debate.

  PublisherDOI

• Barriers, limits and limitations to resilience

  2018-09-28 · 2 citations

  book-chapter

  Enhancing resilience has become a key element of preparedness for extreme events and climate change. This chapter explores barriers, limits and limitations to resilience through a case study of the Barnegat Bay region of coastal New Jersey, USA. Like many urbanised coastal watersheds, the Barnegat Bay region is already experiencing significant environmental stresses as the result of population growth and residential and commercial development, including loss of wetlands and natural areas, and contamination and eutrophication of the bay from run-off. Stakeholders proposed numerous adaptive strategies for increasing climate resilience in the region, but at the same time identified many limits and limitations associated with these efforts. Recommendations generally fell into three broad categories: engineering measures, policy and land use changes, and economic diversification. The barriers identified by stakeholders can be roughly sorted into several categories including: settlement and economic development barriers; political and cultural barriers; and policy and regulatory barriers.

  PublisherDOI

• LOCAL RESPONSES TO HURRICANE SANDY:

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2016-06-03 · 6 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Towards a Transformative Role for Local Knowledge in Post-Disaster Recovery: Prospects for Co-Production in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy

  Journal of Extreme Events · 2016-03-01 · 12 citations

  article

  This paper focuses on the reassessment of risk by storm victims in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. It directs attention to the gap that separates local knowledge about risks from professional expertise and to prospects for bridging these different perspectives in pursuit of more sustainable co-produced outcomes. Supporting evidence is drawn from focus group discussions that involved residents of three New Jersey communities in the months following Hurricane Sandy, while they were negotiating paths among instruments of regulatory guidance, most notably an evolving National Flood Insurance Program. Proposals are offered for improving recovery from future storm surge disasters by expanding the permanent constituency in support of responsible redevelopment. Findings suggest that there is fertile ground for employing co-produced risk assessments in the United States and other affluent nations as well as in developing societies.

  PublisherDOI

• The politics of community forestry in a Global Age — A critical analysis

  Forest Policy and Economics · 2015-07-08 · 26 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Barriers, Limits and Limitations to Resilience

  Journal of Extreme Events · 2015-08-01 · 38 citations

  article

  Enhancing resilience has become a key element of preparedness for extreme events and climate change. While much progress has been made in defining components of resilience, many questions remain about identification of appropriate strategies for building resilience, barriers to implementation of these strategies, and limits to the potential effectiveness of these efforts. New questions are also emerging about inherent limitations of resilience-based approaches, suggesting that resiliency efforts must be coupled with broader transformations of the social and political conditions that create and perpetuate vulnerabilities. Investigation of resilience options and barriers has particular resonance for urbanized coastal communities, many of which face significant climate hazards and development-related pressures and are also encountering a suite of technical, political, financial, legal, and policy hurdles to adaptation. This study explored these issues in coastal New Jersey, USA. The methodology entailed a co-production approach, whereby stakeholders and researchers collaborated in the development of climate risk and vulnerability information and identification of resilience options and barriers. The collaboration provided important insights into barriers, limits and limitations of on-going resilience-building efforts but also revealed potential openings for transformation.

  PublisherDOI

• Economic Vulnerability to Climate Change in Coastal New Jersey: A Stakeholder-Based Assessment

  Journal of Extreme Events · 2014-06-17 · 14 citations

  article

  This study investigates economic vulnerabilities to climate extremes and climate change in coastal New Jersey before and after Hurricane Sandy. Drawing upon methodological best-practices in climate adaptation and disaster risk management, which emphasize co-production of climate assessment information, the study employs a stakeholder-based approach to identify key climate-related economic stresses, risks and vulnerabilities. Interviews with stakeholders conducted in the months prior to Sandy highlighted a myriad of climatic, environmental and economic stresses in the region and revealed a wide range of economic assets, activities, and populations that are economically vulnerable. Post-Sandy meetings with stakeholders reinforced findings of the pre-Sandy interviews but also brought to light some new and unexpected vulnerabilities. The study illustrates the value of stakeholder participation in economic vulnerability assessments, including deeper and more nuanced understanding of local economic assets, activities, and populations at risk to climate extremes and climate change. The study also demonstrates the importance of stakeholder-engagement for creating buy-in to the climate assessment process and for facilitating new learning opportunities in a post-disaster context. Given climatic non-stationarity and continually evolving economic conditions, stakeholder-based assessments will need to be conducted and updated on an on-going basis in order to ensure continual relevance to post-disaster learning and response.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Karen M. O’Neill

  28 shared

• Thomas K. Rudel

  25 shared

• Paul Gottlieb

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  11 shared

• James K. Mitchell

  Virginia Tech

  5 shared

• Mariana Leckner

  4 shared

• Joanna Burger

  4 shared

• Anthony G. O’Donnell

  Murdoch University

  3 shared

• Benjamin K. Sovacool

  3 shared