Enhancing Coastal Resilience: Perspectives on Valuing RI Coastal Lands

This paper discusses coastal resilience as an organizing framework for future policymaking, coastal planning, and insurance decisions, and explores the different perspectives of the value of ecosystems held by various stakeholders in Rhode Island’s coastal communities. A grounded theory approach was used in an effort to abstract general insights from the substantive but isolated areas of coastal management and economics. Special attention is given to the perspectives of municipal decision makers, the National Flood Insurance Program, natural economists, and real estate developers. We have (1) conducted a statistical analysis of environmental spending of RI towns, (2) identified key models for ecosystem services valuation, (3) researched the major threats to coastal ecosystems, and (4) explored how the coastal resilience theme might shape the future of the coast. Elements of the study rely on the formulation and testing of hypotheses. However, the analysis was primarily a demonstration of the inter-disciplinary emergent thinking that this paper proposes will provide solutions for coastal communities’ most pressing issues. The framing question is how social, personal, and environmental goals align when coastal resilience is enhanced, and how stakeholders can utilize these new decision-making tools to achieve increased communication and a more accurate understanding of the perceived value of ecosystem services

Comparing Sea Level Rise Adaptation Strategies in San Diego: An Application of the NOAA Economic Framework

Coastal communities in San Diego County face ever-increasing risks from sea level rise, coastal storm events, flooding, and beach erosion. The potential hazards to this vital, vibrant 70-mile stretch of California coastline compel city planners and decision-makers to develop coastal resilience initiatives by conducting vulnerability assessments and considering potential adaptation strategies. Nexus Planning & Research was tasked with providing a comparative benefit-cost analysis of coastal resilience strategies for participating cities in San Diego County, following the framework outlined in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) funded study, What Will Adaptation Cost? An Economic Framework for Coastal Community Infrastructure (NOAA, 2013). Specifically, we were directed to comparatively assess the trade-offs (spending vs. benefits) of various coastal resilience strategies, as identified by participating jurisdictions. Ultimately, the City of Carlsbad and the City of Del Mar were the two jurisdictions that participated in this study. We evaluated the potential damage or loss to at-risk properties from sea level rise, and the cost of protecting, adapting, or abandoning those properties. The intent of this study is to compare the cost and benefits of sea level rise action scenarios, using benefit-cost ratios. This report is part of a larger, multifaceted project led by the San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, a partnership of local and regional agencies and groups. The project, Connecting the Dots and Building Coastal Resilience in the San Diego Region, was funded through the NOAA Coastal Resilience Grants Program, a federally funded opportunity for coastal communities to prepare for changing sea levels and extreme storm events.https://digital.sandiego.edu/npi-sdclimate/1010/thumbnail.jp

Coastal Resilience Decision Making with Machine Learning

Our research aims to understand how social data can be integrated with climate data using machine learning for coastal resilience decisions. Although data analytics techniques have been adapted for decision models, incorporating unstructured data is a challenge. We adapt a design science research approach to develop a coastal resilience decision model that can accommodate various sets of climate criteria and social attributes to help us understand coastal risks in communities vulnerable to coastal hazards. We collected social data from environmental groups and individuals and conducted an exploratory social media data analysis on coastal resilience in the greater Boston, U.S., area. We employ non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), a topic modeling technique, to extract human-interpretable topics from a preliminary dataset of 131 documents from 50 different accounts. The outcomes of this research can help community members and policy makers understand and develop robust sustainability and climate focused decisions

Living Shorelines & Resilience in Southern California: A Summary of a Series of Workshops held as part of The Resilient Coastlines Project of Greater San Diego

In 2016, a series of workshops were held to discuss living shorelines in SouthernCalifornia. The workshops specifically focused on the unique benefits, challenges andopportunities for implementing living shorelines in the region, and the nexus betweennature-based solutions and ongoing local adaptation planning. Approximately 140participants partook in these dialogues, and some of the key themes that emergedinclude: Letting nature do the work for you Designing for the future Integrating nature into shoreline management projects Project goals distinguishing living shorelines Engineering and urban living shorelines Space constraints along urban coastlines Permitting pathways to support demonstration projects Living shorelines and phased sea level rise planning Designing with watersheds and sediment management in mind Exploring emerging commercial opportunities Public access and project success Planning for living shorelines alongside the community Sharing monitoring and best practices to ensure future success Citizen science and socio-ecological monitoringThe workshops provided the first ever opportunity for Southern California stakeholdersto outline what is unique about designing living shorelines in the context of SouthernCalifornia shorelines for state and federal entities