Massachusetts

Best Practices for Coastal Louisiana Manual not just for Louisiana

Wesley Shaw — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:35:18 +0000

The Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX) and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) recently released the Best Practices Manual for Development in Coastal Louisiana website.

What’s novel about this site is that it provides strategies for creating sustainable and resilient coastal communities based on “geotypes” (pick from chenier plain, alluvium, upper riverbanks, middle riverbanks, lower riverbanks, or coastal delta: map for where these are in Louisiana here).

While the geotypes aren’t found everywhere, many of the recommendations on the site are relevant not only for other parts of the Gulf of Mexico, but for coastal areas around the country. Definitely worth a look.

Best Practices Manual for Development in Coastal Louisiana website.

Fast, Perfect, and Cheap Disaster Response

Wesley Shaw — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:09:34 +0000

“The federal government is a support role. So if you think FEMA responds to disasters or that we’re in charge, first of all, we’re never in charge, we’re always in support, and and we work for a lot of different folks.”

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate delivers a great TED talk on the federal role in disasters, what we’re doing wrong when we respond to them (most of the problem being how we think about disasters and the people caught up in them), and how we might/must use social media to meet our goals, even if our goals are to get a little more sleep. Check out the video below.

NOAA Releases New Storm Surge Brochure

Wesley Shaw — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:57:47 +0000

NOAA’s National Hurricane Center Storm Surge Unit has put together a new brochure explaining the what storm surge is and how to best measure it.

There’s nothing here on how to prevent losses, but the before/after shots (on page 3) should motivate some people to think about how we need to plan for it.

Added to our Sources for Outreach Materials page.

Download “Introduction to Storm Surge” from the National Hurricane Center (PDF).

Welcome, New Hampshire StormSmart Coasts!

Wesley Shaw — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:21:57 +0000

We at StormSmart Coasts are thrilled to announce that, thanks to a lot of work by our Granite State partners, the New Hampshire StormSmart Coasts site is now live: our eighth StormSmart state!

You can check out New Hampshire StormSmart Coasts here. Also, be sure to have a look at the accompanying New Hampshire Coastal Adaptation Workgroup blog.

Thanks again to all the work by all of our partners. We’re thrilled to have you with us!

Animated Map of Extreme Weather Events

Wesley Shaw — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:44:35 +0000

Just an animated map showing last year’s extreme weather events around the country. Amusing if you don’t think about it. Very worrisome if you do.

Extreme Weather Map

Homeowner Survey (With Prizes?)

Wesley Shaw — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:09:03 +0000

This just in from our friends at Rhode Island Sea Grant:

Ready for big weather, floods & wind damage? Click here to take our 30-minute survey and enter to win a $500, $75, or $25 gift card to Home Depot. Survey limited to 400 participants.

We are inviting 400 Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts homeowners ages 18 and older to participate in a survey to develop a better understanding of progress towards taking action to reduce your risk from increased storminess to help develop an Internet-based program.

This online survey will ask about your demographic information, history of impact from climate events, awareness of increased storminess, and attitudes toward adapting to increased storminess.

Questions? Contact Pamela Rubinoff of the University of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant at (401) 874-6135 or email: climatesurvey@crc.uri.edu.

Making Insurance Seem Smarter

Wesley Shaw — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:12:42 +0000

Pretty clever marketing: FloodSmart.gov should do something like this for floods and flood insurance. Note, this requires FLASH and a decent Internet connection (or a lot of patience).

Happy Friday, everybody.

chaosinyourtown.com

New Reality: Innocous High Tide Floods Street [video]

Wesley Shaw — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:53:46 +0000

Delaware Sea Grant has released a great short video showing how a little (offshore) storm plus a high tide can affect a seemingly safe street. Take a short break and watch. Expect a lot more like this as we see more sea level rise.

New Webinar: The Front Lines of Climate Change

Wesley Shaw — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:38:11 +0000

Next Wednesday (November 30th) at 2PM CST the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium will be hosting what sounds like an interesting webinar on how climate change is impacting Bangladesh (for those who don’t know, that nation is often cited as one of the countries most susceptible to negative climate change impacts). The talk will be given by Taibur Rahman, a Community Solutions Program Fellow from the Ministry of Planning in Bangladesh. He’s spent the last few months in Mississippi working with Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant on local climate issues, so should be able to bring a worldly perspective to our nation’s coastal climate change challenges.

For details (including the link to visit the webinar), see the event’s page on StormSmart Connect.

Army Corps of Engineers Releases Updated Sea Level Rise Procedures

Wesley Shaw — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:01:42 +0000

The Army Corps of Engineers has updated its circular (“Sea-Level Change Considerations For Civil Works Programs“) spelling out how it will approach designing its projects to address sea level rise.

If your community has any Corps projects, you’ll definitely want to have a quick skim (it’s shorter than it looks: most of the important stuff is in the first few pages, though you may want to dive into some of the appendices), and even if you don’t, it provides a good example of a methodical way to approach a complex issue.