Coastal Resilience

Identifying nature-based adaptation solutions to reduce community flood risk using conservation planning and AI approaches

Coastal Resilience is a program led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to assess community risk and vulnerability, and examine nature’s role in reducing coastal flooding. The program (coastalresilience.org) was developed by TNC in 2007 through a public-private partnership between NOAA, United Nations University, Natural Capital Project, Association of State Floodplain Managers, University of California at Santa Cruz, Microsoft, Esri, Azavea, Critigen, and more recently the Global Disaster Preparedness Center and the International Federation of the Red Cross. Coastal Resilience consists of an approach, a web mapping decision support tool (maps.coastalresilience.org), and a network of practitioners around the world supporting hazard mitigation and climate adaptation planning.

The approach consists of four critical steps: 

1.       Assess Risk and Vulnerability to coastal flood hazards including current and future storms and sea level rise.

2.       Identify Solutions for reducing flood-related risk across social, economic and ecological systems.

3.       Take Action at priority conservation and restoration sites to help communities identify and implement nature-based risk reduction solutions.

4.       Measure Effectiveness to ensure that efforts to reduce flood risk while increasing community and ecosystem resilience are successful.

Coastal Resilience projects around the U.S., encompassing 17 coastal states, in the Caribbean, across Mexico and Central America, Indonesia, Australia, and a global effort enable planners, government officials, and communities to develop risk reduction, restoration and resilience strategies. The program has trained and supported over 100 communities around the world on the uses and applications of Coastal Resilience, focusing on the identification of nature-based adaptation and risk mitigation solutions. 

Solutions & Actions

By providing information on coastal hazards, socio-economics, habitats and ecosystems, Coastal Resilience explores nature-based solutions in: 

·       Protecting or restoring habitats as buffers to flooding in front of coastal communities

·       Developing hybrid approaches that link natural and built defense structures

·       Accommodating the landward movement of tidal marshes and mangroves as sea levels rise

·       Designing restored oyster and coral reefs as breakwaters that reduce wave height and power

·       Removing incentives to build in high-risk areas

The science of nature-based solutions in reducing coastal flood risk is growing rapidly; a Coastal Resilience communication and decision support tool examines when and where they are most effective. 

Maps & Apps

An innovative web mapping tool consists of a data-viewing platform and web apps designed to engage key stakeholders and provide decision support. The Coastal Resilience tool allows users to:

·       View potential impacts of sea level rise, surge from storms and hurricanes, and inland flooding

·       Combine coastal habitat and exposure with socio-economic data to identify where habitat management may most reduce risks

·       Examine natural and built coastal defense strategies

·       Compare risk and vulnerability indicators across countries

Web apps are customized to meet a specific need, whether a coastal management policy, post-storm disaster decision-making, community assessment, hazard mitigation plan or cost effectiveness evaluation. Using innovative conservation planning  approaches, we are committed to combining geospatial technology and artificial intelligence (GeoAI) to identify nature-based adaptation solutions to reduce community flood risk.

Combining geospatial-based conservation planning with artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing field and emerging technology. Termed GeoAI, The Nature Conservancy is leveraging AI and geospatial technologies to enhance TNC's conservation planning approach and expose the value of nature-based climate adaptation solutions to key decision and policy makers across governments, global entities and the private sector. Currently, TNC is exploring two GeoAI Coastal Resilience projects with partners Red Cross in Indonesia and globally with the tourism industry.

Technology accelerates everything it is applied to. It holds the promise to accelerate conservation solutions so that they scale to global environmental challenges. As part of this solution, TNC and the Microsoft AI for Earth team are currently developing collaboration opportunities to optimize a 3-year Azure Grant—awarded to Coastal Resilience —to migrate select applications to the Microsoft cloud and explore advanced web mapping capabilities and AI. Being a geospatial-based program that engages communities and stakeholders for climate adaptation planning, Coastal Resilience is well positioned to be adopted by partners with customizable web apps to suit their needs.

While geospatial-based projects in Coastal Resilience and the Natural Solutions Toolkit represent the largest suite of web mapping decision support tools for conservation and climate adaptation at The Nature Conservancy, these programs have yet to reach full potential. Specifically in the next 12 months we will advance two collaborative GeoAI projects with partners Red Cross, JetBlue and the World Travel and Tourism Council to leverage AI technology for conservation planning. Methods developed in these projects using big social media data will be scaled to other Coastal Resilience work in the U.S., Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.

In an effort to strengthen and expand Coastal Resilience in the international arena, over the next three years we are further developing strategic partners and collaborative projects in the technology, insurance, energy and humanitarian sectors. Our goal by 2021 is for Coastal Resilience to be recognized by business and technology companies, as well as the scientific community, government agencies, and local coastal communities, as a global leader in nature-based solutions for climate adaptation informed by GeoAI.  

Outside of website and social media channels developed through our communications strategy, Coastal Resilience practitioners work directly with local coastal communities to identify nature-based adaptation solutions to reduce flood risk. The approach and technologies are catered to meet stakeholder needs, with usability testing and training on customized web apps and the mapping portal conducted at various project sites. Local TNC chapters work with these communities to assess risk and vulnerability, and identifying solutions, through the technology and hands-on training.

The Coastal Resilience program was designed to integrate community engagement with geospatial technology to support hazard mitigation, climate adaptation, and conservation planning. Coastal Resilience has grown to reach over 100 communities across 11 countries over the last decade, supporting more informed climate adaptation decisions and promoting nature-based solutions to reduce community risk from flooding with each project. As part of this effort, we have implemented a measures component that records decision support tool use through interviews, analytics and event tracking, as well as an annual survey designed to better understand geospatial tool and app effectiveness for conservation action and impact. 

TNC and the Red Cross have formed a unique partnership that joins the world’s largest conservation nonprofit with the world’s largest humanitarian organization. This partnership ensures human safety and environmental protection are combined to adequately address the issues vulnerable communities face. To scale Coastal Resilience in the next 1-3 years, we will increasingly work with humanitarian organizations to leverage the mapping platform in disaster-prone populations. For instance, in our Resilient Coastal Cities project, social media data from FloodTags and MIT’s Peta Bencana are used to depict flood events and understand where we can reduce this risk with mangrove restoration.

The team consists of TNC staff, partners and contractors serving as program and project managers, online database managers and GIS analysts, tool and web app developers, UI/UX designers, system administrators, scientists, ecologists and coastal engineers, communication specials and trainers. Management within and across projects is necessary to ensure consistency of design and function of the web mapping decision support system. Technical project managers help coordinate software development, spatial analyses and database generation, document planning methods and communicate the use and utility of the system. 

The Coastal Resilience tool platform is a globally distributed network, meaning that it is a shared technology resource; when one geography advances either the platform itself, or a specific app, all other geographies can use and advance it. The tool technology is centrally located and is under an open source license, being accessible to other program developers. This model of sharing technology resources also means that funds can be leveraged across the network (e.g. not having to start from scratch if modifying an app from a different geography), and that design is consistent.

Solve is a great opportunity to improve exposure of Coastal Resilience to existing audiences such as local governments who are on the frontlines of protecting their communities, and to new audiences in the business and science communities, as well as regional and national governments. Having reached over 100 communities domestically and internationally, Coastal Resilience is intended to assess the risks of coastal hazards and implement adaptation strategies through the conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems. Work needs to expand across a range of social-ecological systems, from low-income communities to low-lying industry and defense infrastructure, from degraded to thriving habitats.

Capacity for outreach and communications is often a barrier to leveraging the Coastal Resilience approach and technology. Solve is particularly keen on this aspect, which would benefit our team that is currently more focused on geospatial technologies. For instance, Solve and MIT’s Urban Risk Lab can benefit Coastal Resilience through their API tools (i.e., Peta Bencana) targeting social media big data, AI algorithms that classify and map those data, and communication efforts to socialize the tools. This approach can help us strike a better balance between customization and replication of our mapping applications enhanced by AI as we expand geographies.