Coastal Management

Coastal Management Cluster Session

Below are notes taken from the Coastal Management Cluster presentations at the 16th Federation Meeting, Jan. 4-6, 2006.

NASA Applied Sciences: Coastal Management -- Lawrence Friedl

Coastal Management:

• Goal: enable partner's beneficial use of NASA Earth science results to
  • Enhance DSS capability
  • Expand and sustain the use of results

Functional themes in Coastal Management:

• Resource Mgmt
• Economic Trade/mgmt
• Emergency mgmt
• Health (public/environmental)
• Coastal change

--REASoN: HAB project - related to Algal blooms

--Numerous evaluations of DSTs and follow-on activities

--Depending on ROSES, may need to direct/fund more projects to jump-start efforts (no coastal related projects in June)

Future Directions:

• Strong model focus & preparation for future sensors
• Themes should remain similar, but bring in new partners
  • NOAA: Marine Fisheries, Estuaries
  • Coast Guard
  • Army Corps of Engineers

Currently:

• Evaluation reports
  • CREWS: Coral Reef Early Warning System (complete)
  • GNOME: Oil Spill modeling (complete)

Fisheries projects will be looked at for future. Lots of opportunity to use data

• Modeling in combinatino with observations helps

Gulf of Mexico alliance -- trying to get political buy-in from Governor to go to the government to address the issues

Harmful Algal Bloom Project (HAB)

• Email-based approach
• HAB Mapping System- constant supply of info.
• Provide real-time data for response
• Utilizes products from QuikScat & SeaWiFS, MODIS

HAB Monitoring

• Given 30 day mean, compared to daily images, are there any anomalies? Put in decision tree and decide what needs to be done.

Rapid Prototyping

• Quickly assess, does the data have potential, and if so, move it quickly into a larger project.

Top 5 Priorities

• Five benchmark reports by FY09
• Strong, competitive proposals & teams
  • Outreach & networking efforts to inform coastal community and solicit coastal projects
• Models & future Sensors
  • Strong model focus & preparation for future sensors
• More NASA Centers involved in Coastal Program
  • Significant involvement by >3 NASA Centers
• Activities with broad set of organizations & federal agencies
  • National impact through national/regional organizations & their constituents

Want to work with Non-Governmental organizations

Try to leverage the information other groups have

Coastal Mgmt at Stennis Space Center -- Jim Closs

Stennis has primary responsibility to support NASA and coastal organizations.

• 3 separate steps to do this:
  • Evaluation - Identify and assess partners' responsibilities, plans, DSTs
  • Verification/Validation - Assess accuracy and validity of NASA resources
  • Benchmarking - Assess the improvement to resources

Working at a local level doesn't allow for a broad impact, and since most gov't agencies already had ties to local, we moved away from directly supporting localities.

There is a High Priority to extend this program to other NASA centers

• Primary Fed Partners: NOAA, EPA, NRL, ACE, MMS
• Other NASA Centers: GSFC, JPL
• Other NGO partners: Gulf of Mexico Alliance, Ocean Conservancy, Coastal States Org., Coastal America, Coastal Alliance, Urban Harbors Institute, Coastal Conservation Association.

Program Accomplishments at Stennis

• Completed HABSOS V&V analysis
• Completed analysis on DSS tools for seal level change
• Refined evaluations for CREWS, GNOME, and HABSOS for public dissemination
  • Promoting availability of evaluations is good educational aspect

Rapid Prototyping Capability

• Objectives:
  • Accelerate assessment of value and potential use of NASA products
  • Inform operational community of potential uses of NASA data/models
  • Provide users with knowledge to mine, manipulate, and interpret NASA data
  • Inform scientists for the data and models needed in the applications community
  • Rapid Response to events of national and global importance

Where does the prototype stop? When can users make decisions? When do you get out of Prototype mode?

• Prototype the feasibility to use NASA data and to pursue if it's deemed successful and to go to the next stage. As you investigate the suitability of NASA results for support systems, you can enhance or scrap.

Upcoming activities

• Complete V&V on CREWS DSS
• Analyze fisheries management DST for potential product support
• Investigate use of NPP and GOES products to serve HAB, CREWS, other decision tools
• Complete benchmark performance of MODIS, QuikSCAT, NCOM, model in HAB bulletin under REASoN

Briefing for ESIP Coastal Mgmt Cluster -- Roger Anderson

Pacific Northwest Regional Collaboratory Partners

--2 National Labs and 4 regional universities

--Formed to attack regional scale problems

• Water -- Supply and demand, irrigation, salmon decreases

Interactions with stakeholders and end-users go back to the late '90s

• Disconnects between user community and research community and how they can be addressed
  • Direct interviews with end-user community traditionally served by Collaboratory partners

Key messages from stakeholders:

• There is a need to address critical resource management issues at a regional scale
• Need to meet environmental mandates with fewer resources
  • Budgets are steadily decreasing, but work still needs to be done
• Multi-institutional collaborations are essential
• Timing is right
  • Growing awareness of global and regional climate change impacts
  • Active efforts to focus on US-Canada transboundary resource management
  • Several state-level sustainability initiatives are underway

Sustaining Framework -- Essentially a portal (internet access to information, raw/processed information that allows one to understand the status of issues across a region).

Coastal Assessment Project

• Focused on Puget Sound
• Assess the need to restore the Puget Sound nearshore environment

The Federation can share information such as Puget Sound research and Chesapeake Bay research. Exchange lessons learned, etc.

• End user relationship with the City of Bainbridge Island
  • Strong existing geospatial capacity
  • Participation in regional LIDAR Consortium
  • Near-term needs to support coastal planning
  • Mix of developed, urbanizing, and natural shorelines
• Willingness to serve as a pilot for later expansion to other Puget Sound areas

Ron Birk's diagram can be applied to PNWRC

• Nearshore Assessment Conceptual Model --> Nearshore disturbance Ranking then Screening tool for prioritizing restoration --> Provide planning tools to other jurisdictions

Regional Collaboration: Key Lessons Learned:

• Regional-scale applications can be built from local-scale pilot projects, assuming:
  • Need a blueprint for where the project is headed
  • Need for regional integration, broader separation from "stove-pipe" cycle
  • Focus is maintained on collectively shared critical needs
• Pilot project end-users tend to be:
  • Early adopters
  • Concerned with broader geographic context of decisions
  • Experienced in getting government funding
• Technical integration among diverse research and applications development communities requires:
  • Leveraging of sub-regional geographic knowledge and user reltionship
  • Management of technical and institutional risk
  • Infrastructure that supports dispersed interactions
  • Investing modest amounts but realizing risks associated (PIs and teams take risks within their own Universities: will they be rewarded?)

Are there standards for metadata? Using a markup language approach as a phase-in for a metadata standard is a good idea.

Extend pilot projects to broader areas? Select proposed projects, scope them to how they can be expanded. Deliberately went to end-users who themselves could broaden the project.

People who develop algorithms and tools work in the basin in which pilot projects are involved, but not necessarily involved once the project expands

Marketing & Customer Service Lessons Toward EOS Sustainability -- Tom Gulbransen

Marketing insights that are useful is inherent in what we do (customer service)

Evaluate whether the federation can/should play a role in promoting marketing principles to make our assets more attractive to EOS customers.

• Customer Service Data acquisition
• Non Data-centric Approaches
• Examle Actions

Marketing process of creating matches through customer demand and product development/availability

• Acquire data on customer service effectiveness
  • Good at acquisition
  • Not as good at measuring marketing
  • Mission statements versus measurable operations
  • Need to get more information aout if we're doing the job well
  • Customer, Service, Evidence
  • Fosters a cultural shift in accountability

Need metrics for missions -- Measure how well mission statements are being met

Marketing, Customer Service sans Data Scientists probably aren't the best to go ask the users what they need. Lead with someone other than the Senior scientist in hopes that they can learn more by letting the users talk about what they need, rahter than talk about data

• Supplement data-centric culture with less analytical ethos
• From sensors to restoration, if only folks would listen
• Governance with balanced representation
• Comfort eliciting dialogue free of data or products
• Getting users to talk will teach us more than what we already know about our own data.

Walk the Customer Service Talk

• Letting your product get trashed around will help to improve it more than just by asking "what do you want?"
• EOS coalition staffing - DMAC or a customer service rep?
• Gain Insights from embracing complaints
• Procurement specs with data quality objectives or DSS hooks
• Annual reporting by Executive Boards
• Rate your experience
• Marketing as products sign

To get feedback, just ask "was this helpful to you?" on websites...

Feedback/Metrics -- The more dynamic, the more interactive we can be in the first stages. It will be good for us to figure out the direction we need to go.

Q & A Where do you expect the next generation of pipeline workforce are going to come from? K-12 grades don't get exposure to coastal science because they aren't in the SOLs, so you can link to watershed science...Or concentrate on Under and Graduate students.

What are the main topics in coastal management that can be discovered or demonstrated through coastal data? Common ways to get students interested in things are Case Studies. (Compare Long Island sound to Chesapeake Bay)

Who are the current developers for Coastal Issue Education? Can we find them, help them out, support them, update?

Can we identify people who are developing new technologies and pair them with Educational developers?

What services do we have that can be placed in Geospatial One-Stop?

Should we be looking at schools and teach graduate students how to be managers, how to be decision-makers (Schools of Business/Government) and incorporate data into their programs? Coastal Management might not have a place in K-12, so the Federation should go to the higher educations to give data. Reach across to engineering schools perhaps.

Where do we go from here? Is it viable for the Federation to maintain a Coastal Management Cluster? There is an increased interest in coastal management because it is separate from Water Management. There are many issues that need to be addressed, nationally and internationally. Potential sea-level rise merits the importance of a Coastal Mgmt Cluster in and of itself.

How do we, as a cluster, spread out and replicate our type of group? It's more of an overlap with educational aspects rather than strict membership to the cluster.

Many lists have been made of indicators. Which indicators for coastal disturbances can be investigated with remote sensing?

Plan of action

• ESIP has a standing committee for education and its Goal is to connect students with scientists so that when the students enter the workforce, they can have contacts in the Federation.
• Connect with publishers to get information out to public.
• We should try to tap into educational funds and collaborate
• Make brief bios (include: here's what I'm good at, here are needs I perceive) to help determine what the cluster can get accomplished
• Document respective needs, resources, partnerships. Then leverage those partnerships, grow awareness of this cluster and federation in general to solicit new ideas.

--A candidate for a test case could be for Harmful Algal Blooms

• Should the federation consider its ability to help with the New England blooms: take ideas from work in south and apply it in the North. Understand the regional impacts, players, circumstances. Coastal issues tend to be very regional by nature, so best practices will have to be adjusted.

--Send Jim Closs comments and questions after ESIP Meeting --Identify a person to undertake Stewarship

• NOAA - taken a lead in media productions for education -- Stormcenter is getting into coastal management with the launch of a few new websites.
• CLEANER project - hydrologic observatory program with regards to national needs for water quality, quantity, etc. Distributed network of sensors linked together.