This session explores the critical role of social science in interdisciplinary efforts to understand and address the complex challenges posed by climate and coastal change to built and natural environments. As change occurs, social science research becomes more valuable in helping communities understand hazards, community vulnerability, and the decision-making process to respond to them. For example, what does a community say about the hazards they are experiencing and what they think is needed to combat them? And how can this knowledge be utilized to bolster what hydrologic and hydrodynamic modeling and risk assessments show about the real world or future predictions? In this presentation, we will review methods for capturing community knowledge through a social science research process known as a History Harvest, which is used to weave responses into planning and adaptation strategies for more holistic results. We will discuss how this process was used in a project implemented to study water hazards in Mobile, AL; Jackson, MS; and Acadiana, LA.