CRMC keeps MyCoast app working with Trust Fund monies

March 27, 2018, WAKEFIELD – MyCoast, the online reporting tool that provides real-time tide, storm and shoreline monitoring data and pictures to coastal managers including the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), has received funding to stay online.

MyCoast Rhode Island is a portal to collect and analyze pictures and information relating to coastal events. Information collected through this site is used to visualize the impact of coastal hazards and to enhance awareness among decision-makers and stakeholders. MyCoast users can upload storm or tide event photos, tag their locations and current conditions (time, tide, etc.) via an app, and the information is stored on the web site, https://mycoast.org/ri.

The CRMC, as one of the administrators of the MyCoast app, received $10,000 recently from the RI Coastal and Estuarine Habitat Restoration Trust Fund (CEHRTF) in order to assess sea level rise impacts. Along with partners Save The Bay, Rhode Island Sea Grant, the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center, the Northeast Region Association of Coastal and Oceans Observing Systems, and Blue Urchin, LLC, the CRMC will use the MyCoast information to ground truth STORMTOOLS flood modeling. The project will also include a training component for members of the public (MyCoasters) on using the coastal resilience tool on the app and web site for documenting marsh conditions and migration of Rhode Island’s salt marshes.

This project will use the existing MyCoast inventory of flooding data to also define thresholds for nuisance flooding in Narragansett Bay and the southern shore to determine how often and how high flooding occurs. These determinations aid in assessing the ability of our salt marshes to adapt to sea level rise. Monitoring marshes – their condition and migration rates – assists, also, in the context of the CRMC’s Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM) maps. Using the MyCoast Coastal Resilience tool will identify areas where coastal marshes are migrating inland and into upland areas as shown in the SLAMM maps.

There are currently 285 MyCoast subscribers, 125 of which have submitted at least one report since the app was developed in November 2014, according to the Trust Fund proposal. More than 900 reports from the study areas have been posted to the web site since then. The funds will allow for site maintenance done by Blue Urchin, the site developer, and through NERACOOS. It will also allow for the partners to analyze existing data to be compared to STORMTOOLS and SLAMM maps to determine accuracy of the map tools. A report will be generated from these results by October 2018, with the final report due a year out from the award of the Trust Fund monies.

MyCoast’s Coastal Resilience tool is largely under-utilized, and part of the award will go toward a trial investigation of the use of that component of the app and web site. There will be four training events held in 2018 to train current and new MyCoasters on the use of this tool, as well as numerous outreach opportunities to spread word of the tool as part of the MyCoast suite.