By Alex Rosen, Assistant Coastal Planner, WA Department of Ecology
As our ability to characterize hazardous areas improves with advances in science and technology, many communities have information to help identify vulnerability and risk to natural hazards along our shorelines – wind, waves, flood, landslide, erosion, earthquake and tsunami, and sea level rise. However, once these hazardous areas are delineated, it is challenging to figure out what comes next.
 
A partnership of agencies, non-profits, academic institutions, and policy advisory groups are working to collectively expand resources and capacity to better support community resilience initiatives. The purpose of this survey is to gather examples of natural hazard risk reduction projects from marine, estuarine, and riverine shorelines. 
The survey is brief and can be completed by anyone, whether a project manager for a risk reduction project or a homeowner. Even if you only have familiarity with a project and were not directly involved, we are happy to receive your submission!
 
Take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CoastalNaturalHazards
 
Survey feedback will be used to help guide the development of a series of case studies and best practices that will provide:

  • Feasible options for on-the-ground risk reduction;
  • Resources that were needed to complete the projects;
  • Opportunities for improvements in regulatory approaches;
  • Benefits of the projects;
  • Lessons learned from experiences; and
  • Detailed information on how to apply these examples in different locations.

 
Our goal is to create a product that reduces the amount of time required by a community to research risk reduction options and provide information that helps narrow the focus on pursuing projects that have a higher likelihood of success.
 
We need your help! Please complete the survey as many times as needed and distribute widely, forward on to anyone else who might be interested. 
 
Thank you for your help,
 
Alex Rosen
Assistant Coastal Planner
Alex.Rosen@ecy.wa.gov
360-407-7125