Plans to Remap Coastal Areas after
Hurricane Sandy Announced
From: Editor, ENN.com
Preliminary U.S. damage from Hurricane Sandy that hit the East Coast in October of last year is estimated to be near $50 billion, making Sandy the second-costliest cyclone to hit the United States since 1900.
Full recovery
from Sandy will take years, but plans for remapping altered seafloors and
shorelines were announced yesterday by a joint collaboration between the USGS,
NOAA, and the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The project includes
acquiring data to update East Coast land maps and nautical charts by conducting
a new survey of coastal waters and shorelines.
"Our approach is to
map once, then use the data for many purposes," said NOAA Rear Admiral
Gerd Glang, director of NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey. "Under the Ocean
and Coastal Mapping Integration Act, NOAA and its federal partners are taking a
'whole ocean' approach to get as much useful information as possible from every
dollar invested to help states build more resilient coastlines."
"The human deaths
and the powerful landscape-altering destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy are a
stark reminder that our nation must become more resilient to coastal
hazards," said Kevin Gallagher, associate director for Core Science
Systems at USGS.
The USGS will collect
very high-resolution elevation data to support scientific studies related to
the hurricane recovery and rebuilding activities, watershed planning and
resource management. USGS will collect data in coastal and inland areas
depending on their hurricane damages and the age and quality of existing data.
The elevation data will become part of a new initiative, called the 3D
Elevation Program, to systematically acquire improved, high-resolution
elevation data across the United States.
The data acquired by the
agencies, much of which will be stored at NOAA's National Geophysical Data
Center, and through NOAA's Digital Coast, will be open to local, state, and
federal agencies as well as academia and the general public. The information
can be applied to updating nautical charts, removing marine debris,
replenishing beaches, making repairs, and planning for future storms and
coastal resilience.
See more at the USGS Newsroom.