The new “Visualize” section allows users to learn how different types of visualizations can help communities understand their inundation risks and vulnerabilities. The “Picture It” page offers tools and local examples of how photos, maps, and mapping viewers can be used to visualize the extent and impacts of inundation. The “Graph It” page directs users to tools and websites that can be used to visualize trends, such as sea level rise, and spatial relationships for complex data sets.

For the more technically advanced, the “Build It” page directs users to training, data, and guidance that can get them started with creating their own visualizations. Visualizing inundation is important in understanding the potential extent of inundation and the risks it poses on the community. Being able to visualize inundation allows communities to prepare and plan for these events in the future.

Visit the NOAA CSC Coastal Inundation Toolkit.

The question facing at least eight local, state and federal agencies boils down to this: With California officials expecting climate change to raise sea levels here by 14 inches by 2050, should herculean efforts be made to preserve the beach, the pipe and the plant, or should the community simply bow to nature?

“Both Coasts Watch Closely as San Francisco Faces Erosion” in the New York Times.

Insurance companies got out of the business of writing flood insurance decades ago, so much of the risk from sea level rise is expected to fall on the financially troubled National Flood Insurance Program, set up by Congress, or on state insurance pools. Federal taxpayers also heavily subsidize coastal development when the government pays to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in storm surges and picks up much of the bill for private losses not covered by insurance.

For decades, coastal scientists have argued that these policies are foolhardy, and that the nation must begin planning an orderly retreat from large portions of its coasts, but few politicians have been willing to embrace that message or to warn the public of the rising risks.

Organizations like Mr. Ebell’s, [the Competitive Enterprise Institute] even as they express skepticism about climate science, have sided with the coastal researchers on one issue. They argue that Congress should stop subsidizing coastal development, regarding it as a waste of taxpayers’ money regardless of what the ocean might do in the future.

“If people want to build an expensive beach house on the Florida or Carolina coast, they should take their own risk and pay for their own insurance,” Mr. Ebell said.

That’s big: when people from all political stripes agree that something should change, it just might.

Using the National Flood Hazard Layer Web Map Service (WMS) in Google Earth

(More on how to find and interpret FIRMs on our Interpreting FIRMs and FIS Reports page)

The goals of IS-318, Mitigation Planning for Local and Tribal Communities (also referred to as Hazard Mitigation Planning) are:

• Assist participants in undertaking the hazard mitigation plan development process. This plan will meet the needs of your community and fulfill the requirements for local plans.
• Help federal and state plan reviewers interpret the regulations to inform the review of local or Tribal hazard mitigation plans.

You can access info on the training on FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute site.

Too busy for that? Have a look at their 90-minute webinar and slide presentation in the FEMA library.

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.

You can listen to the interview here.

“Hazard mitigation is very important and there’s a lot of value in looking at past events, but we know with climate change that we can’t use the past to project what the future will be like. For example, the flood that a community used to experience every 100 years may now be the 20-year flood.”

Nice Coastal Services Magazine article on Lewes, Delaware, where the city (with help from ICLEI and Delaware Sea Grant) successfully merged climate change adaptation into their hazard mitigation planning. One participant called it a “win-win, no-regrets strategy.” I expect we’ll be seeing a lot efforts like this in the future.

The Bay Citizen reports that while not everybody likes the regulation as passed, it has at least some support from both environmental and development interests. From the Bay Citizen:

“These policies discourage projects that would develop in dumb places, and it encourages tidal marsh restoration in undeveloped areas,” said David Lewis, executive director of the nonprofit Save the Bay.

Sounds like a good start.

You can download a PDF of the exact language passed here.

(Image: ground.zero)

Here’s what FEMA has to say about it:

The 2011 CCM, 4th Ed. (FEMA P-55), is a 2-volume publication that provides a comprehensive approach to planning, siting, designing, constructing, & maintaining homes in the coastal environment. Volume I provides information about hazard identification, siting decisions, regulatory requirements, economic implications, & risk management. The primary audience for Volume I is design professionals, officials, & those involved in the decision-making process. Volume II contains in-depth descriptions of design, construction, & maintenance practices that, when followed, will increase the durability of residential buildings in the harsh coastal environment and reduce economic losses associated with coastal natural disasters. The primary audience for Volume II is the design professional who is familiar with building codes & standards & has a basic understanding of engineering principles.

I haven’t had a chance to read through it yet, but a quick glance shows a number of updated illustrations and photos and some new content. I’m looking forward to reading more as soon as I have a few spare hours or days.