Working Group on Regional/State/National Level Policy and Governance
Table of Contents
Abstract for SAGE Conference Working Group Discussion on Regional/State/National Level Policy
and Governance .…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1
SAGE 2014 Workshop – Overall Working Group Protocol.................................................................3
Figure 1. Graphical framework for setting working group priorities/action items4/28/14 ................. 4
Working Group Members: Regional/State/National Level Policy and Governance ...........................5
Framework for SAGE Conference Working Group Discussion on Local and Spatial Considerations .. 11
Framework for SAGE Conference Working Group Discussion on Physical Infrastructure Choices
Working Group ............................................................................................................................ 12
Abstract for SAGE Conference Working Group Discussion on Regional/State/National Level
Policy and Governance
The overall goal of our network is to put forward a shared framework for better informing resilient
coastal infrastructure decisions based on physical, natural, and societal conditions. In our grant proposal
we anticipated that this resilient infrastructure framework would include understanding communities as
existing and evolving within adaptive gradients, addressing spill-over and equity effects of infrastructure
decisions, using evidence regarding the impacts of fast-onset disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tsunamis) to
improve practices and policies for chronic, slow-onset phenomena (e.g. sea level rise), and tying the
application of our theory to increasingly available indicators of climate change and local conditions. As
the project develops there will certainly be other considerations that emerge from our process.
According to the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE): "Coastal risk reduction can be achieved through a
variety of approaches, including natural or nature- based features (e.g., wetlands and dunes),
nonstructural interventions (e.g., policies, building codes and emergency response such as early warning
and evacuation plans), and structural interventions (e.g., seawalls and breakwaters)." For the purpose
of this working group, discussion about early warning or evacuation planning and similar emergency
response is beyond our scope, but local policies and building codes etc. are part of our considerations.
The particular focus of the Policy and Governance Working Group is understanding what factors
currently underlie the decisions that get made at the regional, state, and national levels, as well as the
scientific information that ought to be included in decisions, but may need to be properly presented or
translated to be useful. One of the roles of this team will be to assess the state of decision support for
infrastructure decisions, compare and contrast regional information, policies, and governance structures
for infrastructure decision-making, and opportunities for and the nature of improved decision support
to support regional/state/national level infrastructure decision-making.
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The RCN includes 3 Working Groups: The Infrastructure Working Group will identify ranges of
infrastructure. The Local and Spatial Working Group will work on questions similar to ours but at the
local level, with an additional emphasis on equity questions.
We will use this discussion as a means of exploring the benefits and drawbacks to and interrelationships
among green, gray, and social/cultural infrastructure. We would like to determine what possible
improvements could be made for the future to help support a broader consideration and assessment of
green, grey, and cultural infrastructure approaches to increase resilience.
Consider the following questions:
1) What governance characteristics currently determine the kinds of intervention that are
selected at regional/state/national levels?
1a) What are the strengths and weaknesses of current governance arrangements for
making decisions about coastal infrastructure?
1b) How does this vary across the political jurisdictions and especially within and between
the Northeast and Caribbean regions?
2) What information is currently lacking or not appropriately translated which could aid in
planning and designing infrastructure (green or gray or non-structural) or understanding the
governance opportunities or impediments?
2a) What form should that information take to be most useful to regional/state/national
decision-making?
3) How do your regions/states/nations make infrastructure (grey and green) decisions
currently?
3a) How is scientific information included in the process?
4) What regulatory or other policy incentives or barriers exist that may incentivize or prevent
adoption of resilient coastal adaptation options?
5) What opportunities exist for research in this area?
6) Are there additional outside professionals or academics currently studying these issues whom
we should bring into the discussion?
6a) What are the other relevant networks on these issues for these regions?
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SAGE 2014 Workshop – Overall Working Group Protocol
The overall goals of the project are to establish a strongly connected Research and practice Learning
Community (RLC) of US and Caribbean engineers, geologists, ecologists, social scientists, planners and
policymakers with experience in analyzing, planning for and responding to chronic or catastrophic
events, and ultimately expand the network regionally and worldwide. The RLC will:
a. Develop a framework for resilient infrastructure policy making: The multidisciplinary
collaboration among the RLC members will identify the key policy-relevant data needed for
resilient infrastructure selection and use that information to develop the SAGE framework;
b. Organize existing data and coordinate future data collection: The development of the
framework will provide an organizing scheme for future collection of data.
c. Build a web of connections: SAGE activities will build new capacity connecting: existing
collaborative networks; researchers and policy-makers; disciplines, NGOs, universities, and
government bodies; geographic regions; all to facilitate policy-relevant research and the uptake
of research findings into NGO and State policies.
d. Identify future research themes: Working through the framework will allow us to develop the
relationships and shared understandings as well as policy insight needed to identify next-phase
research to enable resilient, sustainable coastal policy and infrastructure.
The workshop will use a working group model that will result in tangible, prioritized items for both nearterm and longer-range action by SAGE members. The implementation group will be identified after the
workshop, and may include some or all members of each working group. In the process of working
group debriefings, the workshop will also provide cross-disciplinary orientation to attendees.
Specific outcomes from this year’s workshop working groups are expected to include the following:
- Preliminary identification of the most important input data parameters for infrastructure
selection across a range of situations;
- Identify current gaps in data to characterize those parameters and allow correlations among
them;
- Initial development of key characteristics of SAGE framework;
- Publication and dissemination of workshop proceedings which set the agenda for the remaining
four years of the grant, and serve as a focal point to direct future research and action item in
this area. Anticipated title: “A Framework for Coastal Resilience: Sustainable Adaptive
Gradients and Shades of Infrastructure;”
- Work plans for the year which will result in new partnerships for future research collaboration,
development of follow-on proposals for funding, and approaches to policy diffusion and uptake.
For this year, we will organize working groups along disciplinary/interest lines. The working groups are:
- Physical infrastructure choices
- National/state level policy and governance
- Local and spatial considerations
The working groups will be asked to summarize their findings from each question in their abstract and
present these briefly to the group.
The working groups will use Figure 1 (below) to graphically summarize their planned initiatives/action
items. Each item should be organized by the feasibility of achieving that objective or completing that
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action item (horizontal access) versus the importance or impact that that objective/item would have on
the project goal. For example, if the working group decides that a particular action item is highly
achievable in a particular timeframe, and it has high importance or impact in moving the working
group’s focus forward, that item would be placed toward the upper right of the framework in Figure 1.
Examples of action items might include “Develop an online resource library” or “Write a proposal to
World Bank program on Coastal Sustainability.”
Figure 1. Graphical framework for setting working group priorities/action items2/9/16
Manageability /Achievability
Medium
High
V high
Low
Action item
or initiative
#1
Medium
Action item
or initiative
#2
Low
Importance
High
Action item
or initiative
#3
V High
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Working Group Members: Regional/State/National Level Policy and Governance
Group Leader: Leonard Nurse
Leonard Nurse is a former Director, Coastal Zone Management Unit, and Permanent Secretary, Ministry
of the Environment, Barbados. He is presently a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Resources Management
and Environmental Studies (CERMES), UWI, Cave Hill. He is also Chairman of the Board of Governors of
the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, headquartered in Belize, and a member of the
CARICOM Task Force on climate change, established by regional Heads of Government in 2009.
Dr. Nurse is regarded as a leading practitioner in coastal resources management regionally and
internationally, and has undertaken numerous consultancies in this field for regional governments, the
private sector and international organizations including UNEP, UNDP, IDB, and the World Bank. He has
been a researcher with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1990,
and has written and published widely on the impact of climate change on small island states. He has also
served as Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Sub-Commission for the
Caribbean and Adjacent Regions (IOCARIBE), and from 2002-2004 was a Member of the Scientific and
Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank.
Dr. Nurse’s current work focuses on the impact of human activity on coastal and nearshore dynamics and
climate vulnerability, impact, risk and adaptation studies on small islands. Apart from supervision of
graduate research students at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, he is also actively
engaged in the application of the products of downscaled global climate models (GCMs) to a resolution
(50 and 25km), that is appropriate to the needs of small islands.
Leonard is a graduate of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Memorial University, Newfoundland,
and McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
Elizabeth Albright
Fascinated by the learning process, Elizabeth's research centers on how communities, states and nations
respond to, learn from and adapt to experiencing extreme events (e.g., floods). As a social scientist and
policy process expert, she seeks to understand the role of resources, institutions, advocacy coalitions
and public participation in encouraging or impeding policy learning from these events. Her current
project focuses on learning, adaptation and resilience in Colorado communities post-2013 extreme
floods. Elizabeth's research has been funded by the Fulbright Commission, NSF, the University of
Colorado-Boulder's Natural Hazards Center. A native Hoosier, Elizabeth Albright earned a undergraduate
degree in chemistry from The College of Wooster, followed by an MSES and MPA from the School of
Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke
University awarded her her doctoral degree. She is currently an Assistant Professor of the Practice at the
Nicholas School at Duke. When she isn't studying adaptation and resilience, Elizabeth can be found on
the Outer Banks surfing, in her studio painting or developing a wicked algorithm for her NCAA basketball
bracket.
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John Charlery
Dr. John Charlery received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of the West Indies in 2001
and is a Lecturer in Computer Science at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies. Prior
to joining the UWI in 2002, he was the Senior Meteorologist and then the Deputy Director of the
Barbados Meteorological Services, where he served for a number of years. He is therefore a selfdescribed Meteorologist turned Computer Scientist and has directed his attention mostly in the areas of
Computer Simulations and Dynamic Modeling. A significant part of his ongoing research and
publications is in the areas of climate modeling, interpretation of climate models’ results and climate
scenarios generation. He has been running the Climate Modeling Laboratory at the Cave Hill Campus of
the UWI from its inception in 2002 where the emphasis is on dynamic and statistical regional climate
modeling over the Caribbean. His primary interest is in the identification and development of
methodologies which address small scale issues (e.g. small islands, watersheds, mesoscale, etc.) in
global climate change processes. To that end, climate change downscaling (in its varied forms) and the
implications for socio-economic livelihood and infrastructure, particularly in the Caribbean, have been of
particular interest.
Greg Lewis
Greg Lewis is a candidate for a Masters of Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst and an intern at DevelopSpringfield, a nonprofit focused on economic development and
revitalization. As a Research Assistant for Dr. Elisabeth Hamin, he contributed to a National Science
Foundation grant application, which resulted in funding for the Sustainable Adaptive Gradients in the
coastal Environment (SAGE) Research Coordination Network (RCN). His academic interests are based on
housing and climate-influenced U.S. migration. Before pursuing an advanced degree, Greg established a
background in finding solutions to social and environmental justice problems. While working for a major
New York City law firm, he managed class actions against racial discrimination, predatory lending, and
securities fraud totaling more than one billion dollars in settlement awards for harmed plaintiffs. Greg
also worked for the Bureau of Environmental Services in Portland, Oregon, where he organized
community efforts to prevent millions of gallons of annual combined sewer overflows from reaching the
Willamette River. When not stuck in the library or glued to the computer, Greg prefers to spend time
with his family, tackle never-ending renovation projects in their historic Northampton home, or get
outside as much as possible. Upon graduation, he intends to enter the real estate development field
with a special focus on zero net energy performance. Greg holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Film and
Video Animation from Hampshire College.
Ainsley Lloyd
I specialize in indicators – the data that we use to measure what we care about. My BA is in Economics
from the University of Arizona, and I earned my master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, with a focus on environmental and development economics. I started working
on composite indices with Yale’s Environmental Performance Index, and have gone on to work on
indicators and indices for:

Dell computers and the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute: Gender Global
Entrepreneurship and Development Index
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

International Union for the Conservation of Nature: Environment and Gender Index
Global Green Growth Institute
At the US Global Change Research Program, I am currently working on the National Climate Assessment
Indicators System managing the integration of 40 expert-recommended indicators from 13 subject areas
into a single web platform.
Melissa Kenney
Dr. Melissa A. Kenney is a Research Assistant Professor in Environmental Decision Analysis at the
University of Maryland, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and Lead Principal Investigator of
the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) National Climate Indicator System. Her research in
environmental decision analysis broadly addresses how to integrate both scientific knowledge and
societal values into policy decision-making under uncertainty. This research is inherently
multidisciplinary, drawing on the fields of decision theory, environmental sciences, and public
policy. This research addresses a range of topics including global change indicators, nutrient criteria
setting, non-market benefits of nutrient reductions, cost-benefit analysis of urban stream restoration,
scale of economies and diseconomies in coastal restoration, adaptive environmental decision making for
complex systems, model-based bias correction factors for expert elicitation surveys, and value of
information of indicators. These projects were published in a range of referred journals and reports and
funded by NSF, NOAA, and EPA. From 2010-2012, Dr. Kenney was a Research Assistant Scientist at Johns
Hopkins University in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering and an American
Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow hosted by the
NOAA Climate Program Office and the USGCRP, National Climate Assessment. Among her significant
honors are Lead Author for the Decision Support Chapter of the 2013 National Climate Assessment
(2012-2013), Sigma Xi Fresh Faces (2011), National Water Research Institute Fellowship (2006, 2007),
Morris K. and Stuart L. Udall Scholar for Environmental Policy and Leadership (2001), National Winner of
FFA Soil and Water Management Proficiency Award (1999). Melissa received a B.A. with Distinction in
Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Water Quality Modeling and Decision
Analysis in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, and was a
postdoctoral scholar with the NSF National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics at The Johns Hopkins
University.
Robyn Hannigan
Dr. Robyn Hannigan is the Founding Dean of the School for the Environment at UMass Boston. Prior to
this she was a program officer at the National Science Foundation in the Division of Biological
Infrastructure. From 2005 to 2008 she served Judd Hill Chair and Director of the Environmental Sciences
Graduate Program at Arkansas State University. She currently serves as the past-Chair Consortium of
Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. Her leadership includes the development
and implementation of cross-sectoral partnerships focused on the development of sustainable solutions
to climate change for coastal urban and urbanizing regions of the world including the Collaborative
Institute for Oceans, Climate, and Security and the Massachusetts Climate Resilience Center. Dr.
Hannigan’s own research centers on the reconstruction of past climate change and using this knowledge
to forecast future climate impacts. Dr. Hannigan received her BS in Biology from the College of New
Jersey, MA in Geology from SUNY-Buffalo, and PhD in Geochemistry from the University of Rochester.
She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Geological Society of
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America and an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. In addition to Dr. Hannigan's academic achievements,
she and her students hold several patents in areas of technologies for food sourcing, hazardous agent
detection, and disease diagnosis.
Kim Penn
Kim Penn is the climate coordinator for the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management in
NOAA’s National Ocean Service, responsible for advancing both Office and Agency coastal adaptation
efforts. Her focus is on coastal community and ecosystem resilience, with a primary interest in green
infrastructure. Kim also provides leadership and support for intra- and interagency activities related to
climate adaptation and green infrastructure, including the Systems Approach to Geomorphic
Engineering community of practice, and the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation
Strategy Joint Implementation Working Group.
Prior to her current position at NOAA, Kim worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality
as a climate adaptation analyst for the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force and as a
coastal program evaluator in NOAA. She has also worked in the oceanography program at the Office of
Naval Research and for the Florida Coastal Management Program. Kim received her bachelor of science
from University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and her masters in marine
and estuarine science from the University of Maryland.
Rob Pirani
Robert Pirani is the program director for the New YorkNew Jersey Harbor & Estuary Program at the
Hudson River Foundation, and a senior fellow at Regional Plan Association. HEP is a collaboration of
government, scientists and the civic sector that helps protect and restore the harbor’s waters and
habitat. It is one of 28 such programs around the country authorized under the Clean Water Act. RPA is
a non profit organization that focuses on long term planning and capital needs of the NY-NJ-CT
metropolitan area.
Prior to joining the Foundation just last January, Mr. Pirani was RPA's vice president for energy and
environment for more than 20 years. He played a leading role in a series of park and open space
campaigns including the creation of a federal-New York City partnership to jointly manage 10,000 acres
around Jamaica Bay; creation of the 14-mile Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway; the no-cost federal
transfer of Governors Island to New York and the National Park Service for park purposes; acquisition of
18,000 acre Sterling Forest State Park; and passage of the federal Highlands Conservation Act and the
New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act. He also founded and was for seven years the
executive director of the Governors Island Alliance.
Mr. Pirani received the 2003 Advocate Award from Environmental Advocates of New York and the 2003
President¹s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation/National Trust for Historic Preservation Joint
Award for Federal Partnerships in Historic Preservation. The New York Harbor School Foundation
honored him in 2011. Mr. Pirani has served as a founding board member of the fourstate Highlands
Coalition, Governors Island Alliance and Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. Mr. Pirani holds a Masters
Degree in Regional Planning from Cornell University and BA in Environmental Studies from Hampshire
College.
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Roger Pulwarty
Physical Scientist and Director, National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)
Physical Sciences Division and OAR/Climate Program Office
Biography
 Provide guidance and mission leadership, management oversight and direction in overall
management of NIDIS.
 Communicate and mainstream the outcomes of the climate related projects/programs and
NOAA's Climate Program in regional, national and international decision-making
communities in sectors such as water resources, energy, agriculture, ecosystems and
disasters management
 Conduct research and assessments of early warnings systems, vulnerability and capacity for
responding to climate variability and change
 Author technical papers, book chapters and reports
 Participate in national and international assessments of climate impacts and adaptation such
as the IPCC and the USGCRP Synthesis products
Education
 B.S. Atmospheric Sciences, Hons, York University, 1986
 Ph.D. Climatology, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1994
Research Interests
Research interests are in climate variability and change in the the Western US, Latin America and the
Caribbean, assessing social and environmental vulnerability, and designing climate services to meet
information needs in water resources, ecosystem, disasters, and agricultural management in the United
States. Publications include:
 Climate variability in South America, the Caribbean and Western U.S. Hurricane
 Impacts assessments of climate extremes, variability and change
 Communication of climate information for risk reduction
 Designing climate services
 Adaptive management strategies for managing the impacts of climate variability and change
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Ron Shiffman
Ron Shiffman is a city planner with over 50 years of experience providing architectural,
development and planning assistance to low/moderate-income neighborhoods. In 1964, Ron
Shiffman co-founded the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental
Development [PICCED], the oldest continuously operated university-based community design
and development center in the United States.
Ron Shiffman is the recipient of numerous awards from community-based and national
advocacy organizations. In 2012 he received the Rockefeller Foundation’s Jane Jacobs Lifetime
Achievement Award and in 2013 the American Planning Association’s National Planning Pioneer
Award—one of the most prestigious awards given by the APA.
He is a tenured professor at Pratt Institute’s where he chaired the Planning Program [19911999]. He was appointed to the NYC Planning Commission by Mayor David Dinkins in 1991 and
served until 1996. In 2003, he retired as Directors of the PICCED and as of June, 2014 he
becomes Professor Emeritus at the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute.
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Framework for SAGE Conference Working Group Discussion on Local and Spatial
Considerations
The overall goal of our network is to put forward a shared framework for better informing resilient
coastal infrastructure decisions based on physical, natural, and societal conditions. In our grant proposal
we anticipated that this resilient infrastructure framework would include understanding communities as
existing and evolving within adaptive gradients, addressing spill-over and equity effects of infrastructure
decisions, using evidence regarding the impacts of fast-onset disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tsunamis) to
improve practices and policies for chronic, slow-onset phenomena (e.g. sea level rise), and tying the
application of our theory to increasingly available indicators of climate change and local conditions. As
the project develops there will certainly be other considerations that emerge from our process.
According to the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE): "Coastal risk reduction can be achieved through a
variety of approaches, including natural or nature- based features (e.g., wetlands and dunes),
nonstructural interventions (e.g., policies, building codes and emergency response such as early warning
and evacuation plans), and structural interventions (e.g., seawalls and breakwaters)." For the purpose
of this working group, discussion about early warning or evacuation planning and similar emergency
response is beyond our scope, but local policies and building codes etc. are part of our considerations.
The particular focus of this working group this year is on understanding what factors currently underlie
the decisions that get made at the local level, as well as what in our opinion ought to be included but
perhaps tends to be ignored. Obvious examples include cost to local government, historical efficacy,
etc. Less obvious examples might be local culture and power differentials among local actors. In future
years, we will then have a base for identifying how to provide the data, work across disciplines, and
better inform decision-making to improve local choices.
The Infrastructure Working Group will identify ranges of infrastructure; the Policy group will work on
questions similar to ours but at the national level. In this and future years, the Spatial/Local group will
be particularly tasked with considering the equity implications of those choices particularly as they
relate to the spatial decision factors identified above.
We will use this discussion as a means of exploring the benefits and drawbacks to and interrelationships
among green, gray, and social/cultural infrastructure. We would like to determine what possible
improvements could be made for the future to help bridge the gap between professionals in the
industry regarding general awareness, technological knowledge, and design implementation.
Consider the following questions:
1) What local/spatial/community characteristics determine the kind of intervention that is selected at
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the local level? In other words, what are the input parameters/variables that would go into a model for
local decision-making between different sorts of infrastructure?
1a) Which variables weigh most heavily in your particular region?.
2) We'll select five representative infrastructure actions (e.g., a sea wall, mangrove preservation, etc).
Answer the following for each of these:
2a) What aspects of community culture support or discourage that choice?
2b) What are the equity/spill-over issues that ought to be considered for that choice?
3) Does the local government have different information and expertise needs for green versus grey
versus non-structural solutions?
4) What information is currently lacking which could aid in planning and designing infrastructure (green
or gray or non-structural)?
5) What regulatory or other policy incentives or barriers exist that may incentivize or prevent adoption
of resilient coastal adaptation options?
6) What opportunities exist for research in this area?
7) Are there additional outside professionals or academics currently studying these issues whom we
should bring into the discussion? What are the other relevant networks on these issues for these
regions?
Framework for SAGE Conference Working Group Discussion on Physical Infrastructure
Choices Working Group
The overall goal of our network is to put forward a shared framework for better informing
resilient coastal infrastructure decisions based on physical, natural, and societal conditions. In
our grant proposal we anticipated that this resilient infrastructure framework would include
understanding communities as existing and evolving within adaptive gradients, addressing spillover and equity effects of infrastructure decisions, using evidence regarding the impacts of fastonset disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tsunamis) to improve practices and policies for chronic, slowonset phenomena (e.g. sea level rise), and tying the application of our theory to increasingly
available indicators of climate change and local conditions. As the project develops there will
certainly be other considerations that emerge from our process.
According to the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE): "Coastal risk reduction can be achieved
through a variety of approaches, including natural or nature- based features (e.g., wetlands and
dunes), nonstructural interventions (e.g., policies, building codes and emergency response such
as early warning and evacuation plans), and structural interventions (e.g., seawalls and
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breakwaters)."
For the purpose of this workshop, we will limit our discussion to natural and natural-based
features ("green" infrastructure) and engineered structural interventions ("gray"
infrastructure). Civil engineers traditionally have more experience, and likewise are generally
more comfortable, designing and constructing gray infrastructure. However, there are some
regional and cultural precedents for adopting green infrastructure (e.g., use of mango tree
groves in tropical zones for storm surge buffering), and in other areas there is an increased
public interest to include (or at least consider) green infrastructure solutions in resilient design
in order to minimize coastal risk during natural disasters. We will use this discussion as a means
of exploring the benefits and drawbacks to both green and gray infrastructure. We would like
to determine what possible improvements could be made for the future to help bridge the gap
between professionals in the industry regarding general awareness, technological knowledge,
and design implementation.
Consider the following questions:
1) What gray infrastructure techniques are currently available?
2) What green infrastructure techniques are currently available?
3) Classify the infrastructure techniques from Questions 1 and 2 as "standard of practice"
versus "cutting edge" or those that are less common but could be adapted for wider use.
4) What are some of the benefits and limitations associated with each of the techniques?
5) What information is currently lacking which could aid in planning and
designing infrastructure (green or gray)?
5a) What opportunities exist for research and development of green and gray
infrastructure?
5b) Are there additional outside professionals or academics currently studying these
technologies whom we should bring into the discussion?
6) What barriers exist to adapting green infrastructure into civil engineering and coastal land
use planning design? How might these be overcome?
7) What regulatory or other policy barriers exist that may prevent wider adoption of green vs.
gray infrastructure solutions to coastal adaptation challenges?
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