SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Ocean Model Infrastructure For A Resilient Coastal City

气候变化给沿海城市和港口带来了重大挑战。未来几十年，沿海城市将面临海平面上升、风暴强度增加、海水变暖、降水变化、水质威胁以及沿海海洋生态系统变化等问题。对于工业化城市，如被选为试点地点的缅因州波特兰，这是除了管理现代港口复杂的社会经济结构之外的工作。这项研究提供了一种新的方法，包括部署沿海科学、高分辨率建模和直接社区参与，以使波特兰等沿海城市受益，以提高社区的复原力。它涉及建立一个新颖、全面的沿海水动力模型，该模型集成了空气和水温、盐度、风、洋流、海岸线和海底特征以及其他相关参数的数据。然而，要使沿海城市受益，模型必须联系并反映社区需求，因为获取数据是不够的。知情决策和社区恢复力取决于对决策者至关重要的空间和时间尺度的信息，这些信息应易于消化、准确、透明、可获取和有用。缅因州的波特兰是一个小型沿海城市，拥有充满活力的海滨和复杂的港口运营。与巴尔的摩或洛杉矶等其他港口相比，缅因州波特兰的规模相对较小，因此是开发可扩展的方法，将海洋科学整合到地方治理中的理想试验场。这项工作的目标是建立和验证波特兰港的城市海洋模型，从一开始就与城市基础设施和社区需求相结合。这项工作的更广泛影响包括以有用的方式向决策者、土地使用规划者和社区提供关键信息，并提供一套综合方案，从中可以考虑到港口和沿海海洋地区当前和未来的情况。这样的公用事业将帮助沿海城市评估风险，为风暴和其他灾害做好准备。该模型还可用于为港口作业和应急管理提供信息，支持溢油响应，并促进沿海水质管理。该项目已经确定了三个初步的沿海管理挑战，其中水动力模型的见解可以解决一些重要的公民问题：洪水风险和风暴潮的修复和适应；水质监测与管理；港口作业，特别是疏浚和沉积物管理。在这个第一阶段的项目中，大学研究人员将与市政领导、滨水企业和风险社区合作，定义信息需求并制定建模策略，以应对社区挑战。在第二阶段的后续试点中，该项目将开发和验证波特兰港的可操作水动力模型（基于已经存在的低分辨率模型），并进行额外的模型运行（“场景”），以回答我们的公民合作伙伴提出的问题。该项目将与最终用户密切合作，创建新颖、复杂的数据产品，如仪表板和可视化，这些产品用户友好且易于使用，可以从城市海洋模型中提供见解，以支持当地决策。本项目采用的方法有可能扩大规模并推广到其他有港口业务的沿海城市。该项目是对“公民创新挑战”项目（track a）的回应：在不断变化的气候中生活：围绕适应、恢复和缓解的灾前行动——是国家科学基金会、国土安全部和能源部之间的合作项目。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Climate change poses significant challenges for coastal cities and ports. In coming decades, coastal cities will contend with sea-level rise, increasing storm intensity, warming waters, changes in precipitation, threats to water quality, and shifts in coastal marine ecosystem. For industrialized cities, like Portland, Maine, which is selected as a pilot location, this is in addition to managing the complex socio-economic structure of a modern port. This research provides a novel approach involving methods for deploying coastal science, high-resolution modeling, and direct community engagement to benefit coastal cities like Portland in order to improve community resilience. It involves work on a novel, comprehensive, coastal hydrodynamic model that integrates data on air and water temperature, salinity, wind, currents, features of the coastline and seafloor, and other relevant parameters. To benefit coastal cities, however, models must link to and reflect community needs because access to data is not enough. Informed decisions and community resilience depend on information at spatial and temporal scales that matter to decision-makers in ways that are easily digestible, accurate, transparent, accessible, and useful. Portland, Maine is a small coastal city, with a vibrant working waterfront and complex port operation. Because of its relatively small scale, compared to other ports like Baltimore or Los Angeles, Portland, Maine is an ideal testing ground for developing scalable methods for integrating ocean science into local governance. Goals of the work will be to build and validate an urban ocean model of Portland Harbor coupled from the start to urban infrastructure and community needs. Broader impacts of the work include providing critical information in a useful manner to decision makers, land-use planners, and the community with a comprehensive package from which current and future conditions in the port and coastal ocean area can be considered. Such a utility will help coastal cities assess risks and prepare for storms and other hazards. The model also can also be used to inform port operations and emergency management, to support oil spill response, and to facilitate coastal water quality management. The project has identified three initial coastal management challenges where insight from hydrodynamic models can address a number of important civic concerns: flood risk and storm surge remediation and adaptation; water quality monitoring and management; and port operations, especially dredging and sediment management. In this Phase 1 project, university researchers will work with municipal leaders, waterfront businesses, and at-risk communities to define information needs and develop modeling strategies to address community challenges. In the Phase 2 follow-on pilot, the project will develop and validate an operational hydrodynamic model of Portland Harbor (based on lower-resolution models that already exist) and conduct additional model runs (“scenarios”) needed to answer questions identified by our civic partners. Working closely with end-users, the project will create novel, new, sophisticated data products, like dashboards and visualizations, that are user-friendly and easy to use to deliver insights from the urban ocean model to support local decisions. The approach applied for this project has the potential for scaling and translation to other coastal cities with port operations.This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track A. Living in a changing climate: pre-disaster action around adaptation, resilience, and mitigation—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.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.