Case Studies for Environment

Inundation Map Quality Control

Challenge. There was a need to enhance flood mapping by providing inundation maps at various river forecast locations. These maps enable users to visualize the impact of flooding. There was also a need to have inundation map libraries for 35 river forecast locations within three of the five Gulf of Mexico states and ensure the maps for accuracy. As this effort continued to expand in other regions throughout the country, the resources didn't exist to provide quality control for the expanded inundation map libraries.

Solution. TBG's staff at the NOAA Coastal Services Center (CSC) was asked to develop, host, and deliver a quality control training to help build the capacity for other agencies to understand the quality control process and be able to review the inundation map libraries for river forecast locations throughout the country. TBG staff worked with Federal staff to develop the training and create exercises that helped build experience and expertise for the trainees.

Impact. The training evaluations were extremely positive. The training attendees felt that they benefited greatly from the training, from both the background of the project and the quality control procedures.

Coastal Community Planning

Challenge. The clients wanted to influence County Council and the Planning Commission (CCPC) to help promote economic growth opportunities within the County's Comprehensive Plan but also wanted to preserve the rural character of their community and protect the sensitive natural resources. The clients were not very familiar with smart growth strategies, but wanted to investigate how these could help them reach their end goal.

Solution. TBG first educated the clients about the history of planning and development within the United States and provided development trends for their community. TBG provided the clients with smart growth strategies and community engagement tools, and helped them evaluate how their current development regulations coincided with smart growth. Clients were able to determine which smart growth strategies were best for their community and were able to devise a plan for how to translate the importance of smart growth to other community members.

Impact. The clients were able to successfully communicate the importance of smart growth to community members, the County Council, and the Planning Commission by tailoring their message for each group based on the tools provided in the CCPC training. The clients were able to illustrate how smart growth techniques could help promote economic development while at the same time preserving rural character and natural resources. The successful engagement and positive support resulting from the clients efforts prompted inclusion of smart growth strategies within the update of the County's Comprehensive Plan.

Coastal Issues Prioritization

Challenge. Our client was tasked with convening state stakeholders from the southern Atlantic region to identify priority coastal issues. The stakeholders were engaged in 2009 to implement science-based policies and solutions that enhance and protect the value of coastal and ocean resources of that region's culture and economy.

Solution. TBG's client was asked to help the stakeholders by facilitating a workshop in each state to define priority issues, which would then be combined to define the priority issues of the region. TBG staff and other Federal professionals meet with a steering committee for each state's workshop to develop an innovative process agenda to ensure a wide variety of opinions could be offered and traveled with client staff to three of the states to co-facilitate the workshops. There were over 60 participants involved in the overall process. After the workshops, TBG staff combined the priority lists from each state's workshop to create a draft region-wide priority list for the leaders of the stakeholder group to use in drafting their action plan.

Impact. The stakeholders were very satisfied with TBG's planning process to create thoughtful workshop agendas and meet stakeholder objectives in each state. The client was also pleased with TBG staff's ability to bring skilled on-site facilitation to the process, use effective consensus-making process tools, engage a variety of coastal stakeholder opinions into the process, help the group prioritize a growing list of issues, and reach consensus in a short time.

Coastal Land Cover

Challenge. Since the mid-1990s, the client has prioritized mapping coastal land cover in a consistent and timely manner with the objective to improve the scientific understanding of the linkages between coastal wetland habitats, adjacent uplands, and living marine resources. On a repeating five-year cycle, coastal land cover and change data has been documented. To complete this task, standardization of methods and outputs was needed, improved efficiency, increased communication to reduce duplication of effort, and an extended outreach effort to improve utility and application of the data.

Solution. TBG staff has been involved in many facets during the lifecycle of the project. The standardization of mapping land cover and change required determining cost effective, efficient, and repeatable methods and outputs. TBG personnel have assisted with coordination and communication with the involved organizations through the development of methods, organization of annual meetings, review of derived products and methods. During the development of land cover and change data, TBG staff performs quality assurance reviews on delivered products from external partners. This feedback helps inform the partners in creating more accurate final products. Once final data has been delivered, TBG personnel are responsible for ensuring the data is made available through the multiple mediums, including the Digital Coast, GoogleEarth, and direct File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

Impact. Coastal land cover and change data has been created nationwide for 1996, 2001, and 2006, in addition to many states having a 1992 data set available. These were produced in a cost-effective manner through external contracts with TBG personnel providing quality assurance and oversight of the contracts. The data have been included in the 2001 National Land Cover Database (NLCD), garnering recognition as a provider of high-quality, timely land cover data. As part of the outreach and making the data more readily available and useful to coastal managers, TBG assisted in creating the Land Cover Atlas (LCA), which allows users to view data holdings and obtain county level land cover reports, in addition to custom analysis of the data without the need for expensive desktop geographic information system software.

Coastal Remote Sensing

Challenge. The coastal zone is home to an abundance of unique, diverse, and, often fragile, resources. Wetlands, estuaries, forests, beaches, dunes, and barrier islands harbor many benefits for coastal communities, such as maintaining air and water quality, preserving cultural and economic resources, and providing habitat, hazard mitigation, and recreation. Plans for protection and wise administration require knowledge of the presence, quantity, and condition of these resources.

Solution. Remotely sensed imagery offers a unique opportunity to periodically document and inventory the state of the coastal landscape and how it has changed. The two-day Remote Sensing for Spatial Analysts course offered by NOAA and TBG provides the coastal resource management community with knowledge about remote sensing data, the tools with which to analyze the data, and examples of common coastal mapping and monitoring applications.

Impact. Hundreds of professionals in the coastal resource management community now have the experience and tools to inventory and monitor the coastal landscape. Knowledge of how to select, acquire, and analyze remotely sensed data promotes the protection and wise administration of the unique, diverse, and often fragile resources found in the coastal zone.

Source Water Protection

Challenge. The client was tasked to identify key stakeholders and to develop content for a nationwide training of over 300 communities on how to develop a source water protection plan. The challenge was that the grant funds had an eighteen-month deadline, thus demanding an effective and efficient launch of this effort.

Solution. TBG ResultantsSM provided four seasoned facilitators with significant knowledge about working with community groups. Our two lead facilitators helped plan and design a two-day workshop for fifty participants who represented the key leadership and were tasked with implementing the plans from this workshop. Additionally, TBG's facilitators provided subject matter expertise (as a value added bonus) in making two presentations on the approach to behavior change needed to get the desired responses from the community stakeholders.

Impact. The results from the two-day session provided significantly useful information about the key stakeholders and ideas for training content in the next steps. TBG trainers were subsequently engaged to provide behavior change training to key personnel involved with the rollout of the training to communities.

Adapting to Coastal Risk

Challenge. Coastal counties and municipalities understand that considering hazards in their plans is important, but often don't plan for risks outside of the required hazard mitigation plans. To effectively adapt to coastal risk, it is important to consider all aspects of a community. With limited staffing and funding resources, many communities are unsure where to start.

Solution. The NOAA Coastal Services Center's Roadmap for Adapting to Coastal Risk training offers participants ideas for identifying local drivers, assessing hazard vulnerabilities, and profiling societal, infrastructure and ecosystem sectors of the community with respect to hazard vulnerabilities. This increased understanding of community vulnerability to hazards allows participants to then discuss strategic opportunities to incorporate adaptive actions into existing community structures.

Impact. With this Roadmap, coastal counties and municipalities have greater capacity to use existing plans and resources to begin adapting to coastal risks.