Science and Technology

ASBPA is dedicated to “translating” science and technical information from researchers and academics to coastal managers. Our focus is on four major initiatives:

1. integrating U.S. nearshore research,
2. providing national scale beach preservation data,
3. addressing storm processes/impacts & dune management challenges, and
4. improving and quantifying coastal resilience.

ASBPA’s Science and Technology work is undertaken by our Science & Technology Committee and reviewed and advised by our Technical Advisory Committee.

Read our 2019 Science & Technology Year in Review (PDF – 674 kb)

U.S. Coastal Research Program

Learn more about the USCRP and ASBPA’s role in facilitating collaborations between federal agencies, academic institutions, and stakeholders to develop a national, funded, and prioritized research program for physical nearshore (coastal) processes.

National Scale Beach Preservation Data

ASBPA’s National Beach Nourishment Database maps the nearly 449 projects that have placed about 1.5 billion cubic yards of sand on continental US ocean beaches since the 1920’s.  The project is a collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Regional Sediment Management Program and APTIM.  Click on the About tab in the database for more information.

Access the National Beach Nourishment Database

Storm Processes/Impacts & Dunes

The U.S. Coastal Research Program is convening researchers and managers to synthesize our present capabilities in forecasting storm processes (like surge) and impacts at the Storm Processes and Impacts Workshop in St. Petersburg, FL, April 16-18. A workshop agenda (PDF ~ 894kb) is now available.

ASBPA seeks to have coastal and beach managers guide academic research on dune management and have better access to, and understanding of, the latest academic research on dunes. To accomplish this, ASBPA hosted a national workshop on dune management bringing together managers and researchers to communicate the challenges of dune management. An article highlighting the workshop outcomes is here (PDF – 570 kb).

The workshop resulted in the award of over $265,000 in graduate student funding on dune management. Fact sheets provide more information on five of the research projects.

Full information on our dune work can be found here.

Resilience

ASBPA is coordinating a National Coastal Resilience Network (NCRN) that will quantify the physical resilience of coastal infrastructure on community and regional scales. This multi-agency collaborative effort will engage federal and regional partnerships to develop a common framework that will quantify the physical resilience of coastal infrastructure on community and regional scales and provide a web-based tool that provides community-level coastal resilience metrics specific to coastal infrastructure (natural, nature-based, and constructed features).

We intend to achieve:

1. A systems approach model (e.g., Bayesian network) to quantify resilience based on the probability of past and future evolution that can be evaluated over time to understand annual change in resilience, with and without community action,
2. A web-based national planning and mapping tool to communicate the resilience of coastal communities’ infrastructure, validated within the a specific coastal region, and
3. A multifaceted, concurrent outreach program that includes nationally distributed surveys, regional workshops, targeted regional testing, publications, and trainings through a certification program for coastal practitioners all with a focus on coastal resilience.