Water management is an issue that permeates communities large and small. Too much water, too little water or water of poor quality endangers life, property, economies and ecosystems. Unfortunately, these threats are intensifying, and risk is difficult to predict. Land use planning and community resilience efforts can be effective tools to address these and other water-related issues. However, success is often dependent on the incorporation of timely, relevant information at a local scale. Wading through the sea of big data, models and tools can be no easy task.
NOAA Water Initiative
Fortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has come together with all levels of government, academia, non-governmental and private sector organizations, and stakeholders to implement the NOAA Water Initiative (NWI) (available at: www.noaa.gov/water). The NWI focuses on five interdependent objectives:
I am working with a small group of dedicated NOAA partners on the Service Delivery and Decision Support Teams to ensure that the correct data, in the most appropriate formats, is delivered to end users by the most trusted sources so that it can and will be used to make the most informed decisions possible.
American Planning Association National Planning Conference
As a part of this effort, Miki Schmidt and Lori Cary-Kothera, from NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, and I presented last week at the America Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in San Francisco. We spoke with more than 70 planners from across the United States about the National Water Model, analysis services that offer information about current conditions that are available online, a variety of analysis and forecasting services that are under development, and tools offered through the Office for Coastal Management’s Digital Coast.
Our goal was to demonstrate how information from these tools and services can facilitate short-term actions and long-term planning to address water-related risks and to learn what elements are most critical to the decision-making needs of communities and planners.
We had a productive conversation and look forward to engaging more with planners and planning practitioners in the future. If you would like more information, or have specific needs that you would be willing to discuss, please send me an email.
Meet the author
Karen Bareford, Ph.D.
Sea Grant Water Resources Lead
Karen Bareford works with the Alabama Water Institute, the University of Alabama and the National Sea Grant College Program. She provides leadership on water recsource initiatives and efforts... Read more
Phone: 205-348-9719
Email: [email protected]