Sam Merrill - Financial adaptation to sea level rise and storm surge: The COAST approach and potential applications

 

Students, faculty and staff are invited to attend a presentation by Dr. Sam Merrill, Director of the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University of Maine.

Most GIS tools developed to respond to the challenges of climate change focus on the damage caused by sea level rise (SLR) or increased storm surges and do not calculate or visualize the economic benefits of the adaptive actions municipalities could take in response to different levels of SLR and storm surge.  The COAST approach assesses costs and benefits of adaptations to SLR scenarios by incorporating a variety of existing tools and datasets, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' depth-damage functions; NOAA hurricane models; and other flood methods, as well as projected SLR scenarios over time, property values, and infrastructure costs, into a comprehensive GIS-based picture of potential economic damage.  COAST displays the location-specific avoided costs associated with particular adaptive actions, along with costs incurred by implementing those actions, to assist coastal municipalities in selecting appropriate strategies.  COAST also has applications for inland areas that include analyzing and displaying the economic impacts of any potential hazard event that can be mapped (e.g., extreme rainfall, fire) as well as the social and environmental impacts of those events. COAST bundles processes in Excel and the ArcGIS ArcGlobe application. It has been designed to eventually become a stand-alone ArcGIS Desktop extension.  Learn more about COAST at http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/docs/coast.arcuser.pdf.

 

A copy of Dr. Merrill's presentation can be found here.