The Challenge
The Department of the Interior (DOI) Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Program consists of 167 restoration, mitigation, and science projects to develop and implement best practices for improving coastal resilience to sea-level rise, storm surge, and wave erosion for ecosystems and communities.
DOI initiated an assessment of this program in 2015, led by Abt Global, to understand its impact and ultimately advance understanding of green infrastructure and efforts to improve coastal resilience.
The Approach
The assessment began with clarifying the program’s resilience goals and the development of ecological and socio-economic metrics across the DOI project actions. Abt is analyzing these metrics to determine the ecological and community impacts resulting from the resilience investment portfolio, both to date and anticipated. Also, the metrics developed and collected across the resilience projects will provide a monitoring template for other agencies and organizations.
The Results
Successful evaluation of the projects and program will consider individual project outcomes as well as ecological and community resilience impacts and improved understanding across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
In addition to assessing each project performance and impacts, we will be conducting in-depth case study analyses and analytical modeling to assess contributions to resilience across resilience activities, geography, and various scales.