Coastal Resilience 2.0
Since 2005, The Nature Conservancy has worked with government agencies and communities to better prepare for sea-level rise, storm surge, and to understand the role natural habitat can play in reducing our risk from these threats. The Coastal Resilience approach has helped communities and government planners make informed development, protection and restoration decisions since the online tools were first released in 2008.
Building on this history, in 2014, The Conservancy and partners released Coastal Resilience 2.0; a suite of tools for coastal communities, government agencies and other stakeholders that informs hazard mitigation, risk reduction, climate adaptation and conservation decisions. The tools are available at www.maps.coastalresilience.org and are part of a wider set of resources available at www.coastalresilience.org
• Coastal Resilience tools start with visualizations of the current situation – socially, economically and ecologically. To these we add reasonable storm surge and sea level rise scenarios.
• Using these interactive tools backed by the best available science, we enable planners, elected officials, managers and citizens to visualize current and future risk and then help identify a suite of solutions that; reduce social and economic risks and maximizing the benefits that nature provides.
• Solutions to date include: protecting or restoring area salt marshes as buffers; developing hybrid approaches that link natural and built defense structures; removing incentives to build in high-risk areas (i.e., often on top of low-lying wetlands); and even designing restored oyster reefs to serve as breakwaters tailored to community needs.
For more information visit http://www.coastalresilience.org