Could something as simple as street signs help protect New Yorkers from the wrath of future hurricanes?

That’s an idea a group of researchers are exploring from the heart of the wreckage, in Staten Island.

Geologist Alan Benimoff is part of a team of scholars at the College of Staten Island developing relatively low-cost ideas for building a storm-resistant New York City. Photo: College of Staten Island

New York City leaders present and future are fielding questions about big-tickets responses like sea barriers, with price tags stretching into the billions. They’re hardly the first: When the deadly hurricane of 1900 struck Galveston Island on the Texas Gulf Coast, taking at least 6,000 lives, the city responded by building a sea wall and raising the entire island 15 feet.

“Obviously the cost of that would be tremendous now,” said Alan Benimoff, a geologist at the College of Staten Island.

Instead, Benimoff and colleagues are looking at more modest measures to minimize the devastation of future storms and surges. At the top of their list is a strikingly simple idea: signs and simple, color-coded maps that would point residents in the right direction ahead of a storm.

“When we talk about engineering — and rezoning as well — buyouts are very, very expensive. Engineering is very expensive. And my fear is people sometimes get so focused on trying to fund those that they forget the simple, lower costs,” said geologist William Fritz, interim president of the College of Staten Island.

Scientists can locate safe areas based on topography and computer models of where water will go if a surge happens — the type of modeling that closely predicted Sandy months before Sandy hit.

Persuading the city to install these types of signs might be the most difficult part of seeing this concept through, Fritz said. The cost would be somewhere in the millions — relatively cheap, he points out, considering that hurricane resilience projects often cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s costing the city an estimated $28 million, for example, to replace old capital-lettered street signs with a new generation and typeface as required by the federal government.

“To me it is very low-cost, given the impact they have,” he said.

The group from College of Staten Island has met with some of the island’s key decision makers to discuss some of the options and is planning to continue talks with community leaders in the months to come.

Coastal communities on the other side of country — towns along the Oregon, Washington and Northern California coasts — have successfully used signs to direct people to safe ground in the event of a surge, Fritz said, and New York could take cues from them. Though low-lying areas of Staten Island and other boroughs do have signs that direct people to evacuation centers, there is nothing to point them to areas of high ground. In many cases, Fritz said, people would only have to go a few blocks to be safe from the rising waters — they just need to know how to locate those pockets of safety.

“There’s so much high ground on Staten Island and Manhattan,” he said. “All of the boroughs have lots and lots of high ground.”

The meetings among Staten Island community leaders yielded a related idea: designating areas away from flood zones where people can park their cars before a storm hits. That way, even if someone loses their home, they still have way to get to work. Unlike residents in other areas of their city, many Staten Island residents rely on their cars for their livelihoods. The area is still reeling economically, in part because people lost their way to get around, Fritz said.

Potential parking areas include the Staten Island Mall, high school parking lots, “even the golf course,” he said.

The Staten Island group also urges better education of New Yorkers about what to do in the event of a hurricane. When other natural disasters hit, basements are often the safest place to be — but that’s the last place you want to go when a surge is on its way. Fritz proposes more local outreach to make sure people know to go to the highest floors of their homes during this type of storm.

“At least you won’t drown in your basement,” he said.

People should also know not to store important documents in areas that are prone to flooding, he said.

Fritz acknowledges that it might actually be harder to get funding for smaller planning and education efforts when larger-scale projects are on the table. And he notes that some engineering work might be necessary, along with preserving natural marshland that can serve as an effective barrier. But he contends that it’s important to consider all options

“I don’t think there’s a one-answer-fits-all,” he said.