Coastal Resilience Decision Support Receives ESRI Special Achievement Award
Redlands, California—July 22, 2015— The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and partners at the University of California Santa Cruz, Azavea and Univ. of Southern Mississippi were was honored with a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award at the 2015 Esri International User Conference in San Diego, Calif. This award acknowledges vision, leadership, hard work, and innovative use of Esri’s Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.
Coastal Resilience team from The Nature Conservancy, the University of Southern Mississippi, UC Santa Cruz, and Azavea with Jack Dangermond, Esri President, at the 2015 Special Achievement awards in San Diego, California.
Starting in 2008, The Nature Conservancy and partners began pioneering an approach to address coastal hazards by working with local communities and partners to map sea level rise, storm surge, social and economic assets, community vulnerability and natural resources and make the information available through a web-based decision support tool. TNC uses Esri ArcGIS technology as a mapping and visualization platform where ecological, social, and economic information can be viewed alongside sea level rise and storm surge scenarios in specific geographies. This met a strong need among elected officials and local planners for access to data visualization, a decision support framework and resources for informing stakeholder engagement. The Coastal Resilience approach and tool provides communities, planners, businesses and officials a step-wise process to guide decisions to reduce the ecological and socioeconomic risks of coastal hazards and determine how nature can be part of the smart development solution.
“The Esri Special Achievement in GIS award is given to user sites around the world to recognize outstanding work with GIS technology. The Coastal Resilience web-based mapping tool stood out from more than 100,000 others,” says Lead Coastal Resilience Manager Zach Ferdaña. “One of two tools awarded for its work on climate change, Coastal Resilience highlights how nature-based adaptation and mitigation solutions can reduce risk of flooding to coastal communities.”
In addition to TNC, Esri honored more than 170 organizations from around the world and across a variety of industries including agriculture, cartography, climate change, defense and intelligence, economic development, education, government, health and human services, telecommunications, and utilities.
“The SAG Awards identify the organizations and people who are using the power of geography to make our world a better place,” says Esri president Jack Dangermond. “At Esri, we are always deeply inspired by the passion and innovation of our users. They deserve recognition for their invaluable contributions to their communities and the continued evolution of geographic science.”
For more information contact Zach Ferdaña or visit the 2015 Special Achievement in GIS Award winners website.
