Designing and Developing WebGIS SLR tools: NJ Floodmapper

Richard Lathrop, Lisa Auermuller, Jeanne Herb, Marjorie Kaplan,

James Trimble, John Bognar & Jennifer Rovito

Assess Evaluate Your Municipal Risks and Vulnerabilities

Plan Utilize Getting to

Resilience to Plan for the Future

Implement Take Actions to

Increase Municipal Preparedness

Coastal Community Resiliency Progression

www.wptv.com/dpp/news

Information and tools to support place-based decision-making

National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise

Graphic from USGS 2001 http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/cvi/

Bringing the message home to the local level!

Workshop Survey Results: The audience of coastal decision makers highlighted their perceived need for place-based information and decision support tools to inform land use planning, floodplain management and emergency management in the face of accelerating sea level rise.

Designing decision support tools related to SLR:

• Tools should incorporate information

ascertained through scientific research and modeling that can be easily applied by governments and landowners when planning future land use and deciding on policy and regulations that affect coastal resources;

• Tools should forecast expected habitat changes, especially potential loss of habitats important for ecological services;

• Tools should be easy to translate to decision makers;

• Tools should enable easy understanding of potential risks to people and development due to future flooding and related hazards.

(NOAA Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research, 2007)

NJFloodMapper • Goals: to broaden access to vital geospatial

information with the goal of empowering a wide and diverse community of concerned parties interested in coastal management and conservation.

• Research Objectives: to examine how web-based geospatial decision-making tools can be developed and implemented to promote coastal resilience in the face of sea level rise and extreme storm events:

• Outcomes: Develop a focused web-based mapping application with an intuitive interface and gentle learning curve.

Analyze

Audience

Design Product

Develop Product

Launch Product

Evaluate

Product & Process

Front-end Evaluation

(assess users

needs & desires for improved decision making)

Formative Evaluation

(get feedback on design criteria, storyboards,

prototypes, beta products, etc., as often as possible & is needed)

Summative Evaluation (assess if products

work & are useful)

Applying a Instructional Systems Design Model

Front-End and Formative Evaluation

Leveraging federal assets for local application

FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs)

NJFloodMapper: SFHA with Hurricane Sandy Surge extent

FEMA SFHAs under Sea Level Rise at 2050

Graphic from http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/section3_20.pdf

Tidal Marsh Retreat

Marsh builds up vertically through accretion

Marsh migrates horizontally

Maintaining Green Infrastructure: Coastal Salt Marshes

Summative Evaluation How useful are these tools? How can they be improved?

www.PrepareYourCommunityNJ.org

Plan for the Future

Visualize exposure & sensitivity

Visualization & Information capture through map/graphics

Preparedness Assessment

NJAdapt Coastal Hazard Profiler

Municipal Profiles

“map-packs”

Assess Evaluate Your Municipal Risks and Vulnerabilities

Plan Utilize Getting to

Resilience to Plan for the Future

Implement Take Actions to

Increase Municipal Preparedness

Coastal Community Resiliency Progression

So Many Tools: which to use?

Closing Thoughts: • WebGIS tools, such as NJFloodMapper, can provide

access to critical place-based information on coastal flood exposure and potential vulnerability.

• Leveraging national-scale effort with locally-refined

geospatial data and functionality is a good model. – Providing a local scale – municipal focus – Adding local data and functionality requested by the community

Closing Thoughts:

• The user-centered design process was central to that elusive goal of “virtual accessibility.” – Fostered connection to target audience. – Promoted greater acceptance once tool was

released. • Proliferation of WEBGIS SLR tools can be confusing

to the end-user community. • Even with great WEBGIS tools, community level

planning still needs a personal touch through in-the-field outreach and assistance

Key Websites:

Coastal Flood Exposure Profiler Njadapt.org

NJFlood Mapper: visualizing SLR NJFloodMapper.org

Getting To Resilience: A Community Planning Evaluation Tool Prepareyourcommunitynj.org

NJ Climate Adaptation Alliance Climatechange.rutgers.edu