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| Digital Coast | |
|---|---|
| Name | Digital Coast |
| Type | Online geospatial portal |
| Established | 2009 |
| Owner | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
| Country | United States |
Digital Coast
Digital Coast is a federal geospatial portal and program that aggregates coastal data, tools, and training to support coastal resilience, planning, and management. It serves as a nexus for mapping, remote sensing, and vulnerability assessment resources used by practitioners in coastal communities, watershed management, and hazard mitigation. The initiative intersects with multiple federal agencies, state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions to facilitate applied geospatial analysis for the United States coastline.
Digital Coast provides curated datasets, interactive tools, and capacity-building materials that integrate satellite imagery, lidar elevation models, and aerial photography for coastal regions such as the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, Florida Keys, and the Mississippi River Delta. Stakeholders include staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The portal supports practitioners from entities like the American Planning Association, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society, Coastal States Organization, and universities including University of Maryland, University of Florida, and Louisiana State University. Digital Coast aligns with initiatives such as the National Coastal Assessment, Coastal Zone Management Act, and the National Flood Insurance Program to inform resilience planning and regulatory compliance.
The Digital Coast concept emerged from collaborations among the NOAA Coastal Services Center, NOAA Office for Coastal Management, and partners like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Ocean Service to address data gaps identified after events including Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Early development leveraged programs such as the Coastal Change Analysis Program and the Digital Coast Partnership model to assemble lidar and shoreline change datasets. Academic research from institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Duke University, and University of California, Santa Cruz contributed methods for sea-level rise scenarios and ecosystem services valuation. Interagency workshops and conferences at venues like the American Geophysical Union and Esri User Conference shaped tool design and user requirements.
Digital Coast offers services including access to high-resolution lidar, orthophotography, land cover, and shoreline datasets from sources such as the USGS National Map, NOAA Office of Coast Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Centers for Environmental Information. Training materials include webinars and courses produced with partners like Esri, Association of State Floodplain Managers, and National Association of Counties. Analytical tools include shoreline change calculators, flood exposure models, and habitat mapping utilities interoperable with platforms such as ArcGIS Online, Google Earth Engine, and QGIS. Users can download standardized products used by programs including the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, Sea Grant, and the Coastal Zone Management Program.
The technological backbone integrates datasets hosted by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NOAA Big Data Program, and the Amazon Web Services Public Dataset Program, while metadata conforms to standards from the Federal Geographic Data Committee and the International Hydrographic Organization. Processing pipelines use software tools such as GDAL, PDAL, Python, and R for geoprocessing, and rely on APIs compatible with Open Geospatial Consortium specifications. Remote sensing inputs derive from satellites and sensors like Landsat, Sentinel-2, ICESat-2, and airborne lidar programs coordinated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Remote Sensing Division. Data ingestion workflows align with the National Spatial Data Infrastructure and cataloging through repositories including the Data.gov platform.
Practitioners apply Digital Coast resources to coastal adaptation planning, floodplain mapping, and ecosystem services assessment for regions affected by Sea Level Rise, storm surge events tied to Hurricane Ida and Hurricane Michael, and chronic erosion along the Outer Banks. Case studies include municipal vulnerability assessments for cities such as New Orleans, Miami, Charleston, South Carolina, and Galveston, Texas, as well as restoration planning for habitats like mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass beds using guidance from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Emergency response applications support incident management under the National Incident Management System and feed situational awareness systems used by the National Weather Service and FEMA Region IV operations centers.
Governance features interagency coordination among NOAA Office for Coastal Management, USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with advisory input from state coastal managers participating through the Coastal Resources Center at University of Rhode Island and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Nonprofit collaborators include The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Environmental Defense Fund, while private-sector partners such as Esri, DigitalGlobe (Maxar Technologies), and AWS provide hosting, analytics, and imagery services. Steering committees and working groups meet alongside forums like the Coastal Geologic Processes Group and the National Adaptation Forum to set priorities and standards.
Funding streams come from congressional appropriations administered through NOAA Budget, competitive grants from the National Science Foundation, cooperative agreements with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and philanthropic grants from organizations such as the Kresge Foundation and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Policy drivers include legislation and programs such as the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Homeland Security Act as it pertains to disaster resilience, and executive guidance on climate resilience from the Council on Environmental Quality. Performance metrics and reporting align with expectations set by the Office of Management and Budget and federal open data mandates enforced through the Data.gov initiative.
Category:Coastal management