Activities include regular meetings, with speakers on topics of general interest across the member agencies, such as efforts in specific geographic areas or innovative approaches to public–private partnerships. CoastsIG is also engaged in discussions with other interagency bodies (such as the Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services, the Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology, and the White House Coastal Resilience Interagency Working Group) about coordinating coastal research activities and acting on the recommendations of the 2021 SOST Coastal Resilience workshop report.
Coastal Inundation
The Coastal Inundation workstream connects coastal inundation science producers with science users across USGCRP agencies. To this end, the workstream convenes conversations on agency needs and capabilities for coastal inundation tools and maps.
The Coastal Inundation workstream, in partnership with the Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology, also hosts meetings of the Interagency Sea Level Rise Task Force. In early 2022, the Task Force released a technical report that summarizes the latest guidance and projections of future sea level rise in the United States and its territories, providing a key technical input for the Fifth National Climate Assessment and other interagency tools and resources. This updates and replaces a prior report released in 2017.
In addition to these interagency discussions, the workstream regularly hears from agencies such as EPA, USGS, and DoD on their activities researching and managing the risks posed by rising sea levels.
Coastal Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling
The Coastal Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling (C-IHTM) Coordinating Group leverages interagency capabilities and cutting-edge computational power to advance coastal-integrated hydro-terrestrial modeling, answering questions of wide-ranging interest and relevance.
The workshop report outlines a path forward, identifying scientific and data needs mentioned by the participants. Other outcomes of the workshop include initial scoping of regional and topical use cases to organize future collaborative work.
Building on the success of the C-IHTM workshop, the workstream has begun refining use cases for collaborative investment across the agencies. These use cases include the Mid-Atlantic region, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf Coast. The workstream is in discussions with USGCRP’s Integrated Water Cycle Group, particularly the Hydrology and Watersheds workstream, about possible activities in the Colorado River basin. The two working groups are also discussing a possible future joint workshop that follows up on a prior 2018 workshop.
Coastal Science & Decision-Making
The Coastal Science & Decision-Making (S&DM) workstream seeks to understand, catalog, and improve the network and products of federal scientists who engage with coastal stakeholders and decision-makers to promote actionable and useful scientific products.
The S&DM workstream’s first major activity was a six-part seminar series on the science of coastal decision-making, which took place in April–May 2021. Each seminar session approached decision-making from a different perspective and invited federal and non-federal speakers. The S&DM workstream followed up on this seminar series with a three-part podcast series released via the NOAA Ocean Podcast. The episodes covered equity/justice in coastal decision-making, the behavior science underpinnings of individual decision-making, and federal perspectives on effective coastal decision-making.
The workstream is now discussing future directions for collaborative work in coastal resilience.