Coastal Hazard

Mitigation

Keeping Communities Safe

Our nation’s coastal and Great Lakes communities face a wide variety of growing threats. These include land subsidence (“sinks”) and erosion, tsunamis, extreme tides, contamination, storm surges, and flooding. These hazards pose significant risks to infrastructure, local economies, and the overall well-being of residents across the U.S. coastal zone.

Accurate and timely information is the backbone of informed decisions. Ocean observing helps local authorities and stakeholders face coastal threats head-on to protect lives and property and develop sustainable management practices.

IOOS IN ACTION

IOOS Regional Associations provide critical data and services to support coastal resilience efforts. This includes hyperlocal coastal inundation monitoring, informing tsunami alert, evacuation, and path tracking tools, water level variations, contributions to national dashboards, and advanced models that incorporate information on estuaries, inlets, harbors, and intertidal wetlands. IOOS regions also help protect and restore seagrasses, which shelter coastal communities from storms and flooding.

Our Partners in Action: IOOS Making a Difference

Every year we lose some of the bank in front of our cottage. It costs us a ton of money. IOOS (GLOS) data helps us anticipate lake levels—highly important data for us and other lake shore residents.

Timothy J Williams, Lake Michigan lakeshore resident

There are estimated to be 4 to 6 million visitors a year to the US Caribbean Territories. IOOS data provides advance warning for oceanic anomalies, e.g., heat stress, ocean acidification, and dead zones, before they become an issue for the mainland. Information provided by CARICOOS has been vital in tracking and understanding the threat of Sargassum, its oceanic ecology, and providing modeling data for predictive coastal protection strategies. Sargassum already created a state of emergency for the Virgin Islands in 2022.

Dr. Lincoln Critchley, University of the Virgin Islands

I regularly use IOOS wave data to evaluate the magnitude of coastal hazards, the vulnerability of the Southern California coastline to the hazards, and the measures to deal with the hazards. IOOS data is fundamental to applying science-based decision-making to coastal policy and for developing effective coastal resiliency measures.

Kim Garvey, President, California Shore & Beach Preservation Association

I use IOOS regional (CeNCOOS) data to track environmental change and environmental events including storms, floods, heat waves and hypoxic events — and to use that information to advise local, state and federal agencies as well as people and businesses that use the ocean.

John Largier, University of California Davis

I use IOOS data (MARACOOS) to conduct scientific research on flooding, including observations, modeling and forecasting.  These data help inform and protect coastal communities across New York and New Jersey.

Philip Orton, Stevens Institute of Technology

As a coastal community deeply committed to emergency preparedness, we find the new tsunami application to be a critical tool. It is easy and flexible to use and allows access to and clear designation of evacuation zones, allowing you to understand your risk and how to get to safety quickly after an earthquake. Access to accurate information is so important to our citizens and, as a destination location, to our visitors as well. We are proud to market our region as the most prepared on the Oregon coast and the tsunami software has become an important and useful tool!

Linda Kozlowski, Director, Emergency Response, Emergency Volunteer Corp of Nehalem Bay