Reading Coastal Services helps you find out about successful coastal resource management programs and projects. Attending Coastal GeoTools 2009 will help you find out about technology and how it is being successfully used for coastal management.
The theme for Coastal GeoTools 2009, being held March 2 to 5 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is “Building the Digital Coast,” a new initiative that provides easy access to organized and relevant data, tools, and technical training.
Many partners have joined with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center to develop the Digital Coast. Phase one is currently available by pointing your browser to www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/.
Phase two, which will be released in early 2009, will include more partner data and information. Current Digital Coast partners include the Association of State Floodplain Managers, the Coastal States Organization, the National Association of Counties, the National States Geographic Information Council, and The Nature Conservancy.
The GeoTools registration deadline is January 31, 2009.
To get your technology fix before the conference, Coastal Services features an article on an experimental forecast system that has the potential to aid emergency managers during hazardous weather events, enable coastal planners to make better-informed decisions about locating infrastructure, and even eventually provide resource managers with the capability to monitor water quality.
The Coastal and Inland Flooding Observation and Warning project, or CI-FLOW, uses the latest in radar technology to detect how much rain is falling, incorporates the latest in two-dimensional river modeling to predict how water will flow through the hydrologic system, and uses the latest in storm surge models to get accurate predictions of water levels in the vulnerable flat coastal regions.
The North Carolina and South Carolina Sea Grant programs, several NOAA agencies, and other partners are working together on the CI-FLOW project. This is a good example of “One NOAA,” where regional collaborations cut across NOAA line offices to better serve our customers.
-- Margaret A. Davidson
