CoPe EAGER: Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance (NEER) Association

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Nearshore regions, where ocean and estuarine processes interact with terrestrial processes and the built environment, are vital to national security, the economy, transportation, and recreation. However, coastal communities are at risk from major storms, as highlighted by recent Hurricanes Irene (2011), Sandy (2012), Matthew (2016), Harvey (2017), Irma (2017), Maria (2017), Florence (2018), and Michael (2018). Coastal-storm-related economic losses have increased substantially, largely owing to increases in population and development in hazardous coastal areas. As the frequency of intense storms increases, communities, infrastructure, ecosystems, and habitat will be under increasing threat from storm impacts. Despite the importance of coastal regions, there are few field observations during large storms. Major storms develop rapidly, and reconnaissance teams must mobilize quickly to obtain pre-storm site characterization and to deploy instruments to collect valuable perishable measurements during the storm. The flexibility to form the broad, interdisciplinary science teams needed to address system hypotheses is not available through traditional NSF programs. The Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance (NEER) Association established under this EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will enable coordination and deployment of multi-disciplinary researchers to collect perishable data needed to learn from storm-induced coastal disasters. The resulting observations will be useful to the science and engineering community to understand and predict the intertwined responses of the natural system, the built environment, and the socio-economic structures to impacts of extreme storms, leading to improved coastal management strategies and reduced risks. The NEER Association will entrain and train new members, including students and postdocs, ensuring a growing community of coastal-storm researchers. The national Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance (NEER) Association will (i) build a network of academic, federal, and industry scientists and practitioners, (ii) coordinate and deploy interdisciplinary storm response teams, (iii) provide logistical support for field teams, and (iv) promote broad dissemination of the resulting data and findings. The NEER members will develop a database of potential field sites and emergency management contacts, and will entrain their local communities to determine key regional issues. When a storm is imminent, field team members will be selected to obtain data that will be used to address interdisciplinary questions relevant to the impacted region and the storm characteristics. These teams will conduct site characterization before and after extreme storms, and will collect measurements during storms that can be used to develop new concepts about the nearshore system. By working together across traditionally disparate disciplines, this community of academic, agency, and industry researchers will integrate diverse perspectives, methods, and goals, leading to development of new long-term collaborations and facilitating co-development of tools and integration of understanding of the nearshore system. The NEER Association will participate in the NSF-funded CONVERGE Leadership Corps and will coordinate with other NSF-supported Extreme Events Reconnaissance groups (EERs), including the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (ISEEER), Geotechnical and Structural Engineering (GEER and StEER, respectively), Operations and Systems Engineering (OSEER), and Social Science (SSEER) efforts. Instrumentation needs will be coordinated with the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID Facility, and communications and data dissemination will be facilitated in collaboration with the NHERI cyber-infrastructure DesignSafe-CI.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.