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The Coastal Storm Awareness Program Final Report

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The Coastal Storm Awareness Program Final Report THE COASTAL STORM AWARENESS PROGRAM FINAL REPORT NOVEMBER 2015 I Cover illustration: track of Superstorm Sandy, 22-29 October 2012 credit: Wikimedia Commons ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Coastal Storm Awareness Program Origins and Background ……….…… 1 Coastal Storm Awareness Program Development ………………………..….. 2 Three Framing Questions …………………………………………………………………. 3 Findings and Recommendations ………………………………………………….…. 18 Communicating the Coastal Storm Awareness Program ………………... 27 Extending the Coastal Storm Awareness Program Results ……………… 30 Next Steps ……………………………………………………………………………………… 32 CSAP Products and Presentations ………………………………………………….. 33 Appendices ……………………………………………………………………………………. 37 iii LEAVE BLANK iv Introduction This final report is submitted by the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium (NJSG), New York Sea Grant (NYSG) and Connecticut Sea Grant (CTSG) to the National Sea Grant Office (NSGO) and the Grants Management Division (GMD) of NOAA on the Coastal Storm Awareness Program (CSAP) in fulfilment of Award Nos. NA13OAR4830227, NA130AR4830229 and NA13OAR4830228, respectively. CSAP was an integrated program of research, communications and extension activities that focused on improving the communication of and public response to coastal storm warnings in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. CSAP used as a test bed the actual experiences and actions of coastal communities, residents and emergency response personnel during Superstorm Sandy. Lessons from Sandy secured through CSAP regarding the effectiveness of coastal storm warning products, their distribution and their reception by a vulnerable public can help the region and the nation better prepare itself for the next major coastal storm. Coastal Storm Awareness Program Origins and Background Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New York Metropolitan area in the early evening of 29 October 2012 causing widespread loss of life and damage. Sandy made landfall near Brigantine, New Jersey, just to the northeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm was unusual in several ways. At landfall, it was huge, roughly 1,000 km in diameter. Its direction of approach to the mainland in the Tri-State Area was from the southeast while most extra-tropical storms approach from directly south. Lastly, as it neared the coast, the tropical cyclone Sandy merged with an intense low pressure system and strengthened very substantially. Most of the damage from Sandy in coastal areas was caused by both the arrival of the storm during high tide of a spring tide (upon which the storm surge was superimposed) and the speed at which the storm made landfall (approximately 28 miles per hour) which helped push the water ashore. Severe storm-related flooding occurred in much of coastal New Jersey, the south shore of Long Island (especially western Long Island and New York City) and western parts of Long Island Sound. By the time the storm dissipated over western Pennsylvania on 31 October 2012, it had claimed the lives of 147 people in the Caribbean and the United States. Many areas, including New York City, experienced historic flooding with great damage to infrastructure. Some coastal communities in New Jersey were without power for months. Storm recovery in the hardest-hit areas of coastal New York and New Jersey is still far from complete. Total U.S. damage estimates from Sandy exceed $50 billion. Sandy was a historic storm. The degree of devastation it produced seemed to surprise many, weather and disaster experts and laypersons alike. The storm and its aftermath triggered a nationwide reassessment of coastal storm preparedness in the United States, pursued nowhere more extensively and thoroughly than in the heavily impacted states of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. NOAA’s National Weather Service conducted an assessment in the months following the storm to document and evaluate the agency’s performance and effectiveness before and during the event, focusing on three areas: NWS’s forecast, watch and warning 1 tools; the usefulness of the agency web site as a tool for communicating storm information to the public and the agency’s issuance of storm surge products. This assessment found that NWS forecasts of the track, timing and impact of Sandy had been accurate. However, the report found a number of shortcomings in the agency’s efforts to disseminate storm information to the general public, especially projections on the timing and height of storm surge. The sad reality is that most of the storm-related deaths in the Tri-State Area were the result of individuals who made bad decisions despite having good information, not evacuating from high-risk areas when they should have, or deciding to leave when conditions had deteriorated to the point where it was safer to stay. Significant improvements were clearly needed in storm hazards communication, the understanding of how best to reach citizens living in the path of a severe coastal storm with storm information, how citizens interpret and process this information and what other factors are at play in their deciding to heed warnings to leave or not. Since Sandy, the NWS has worked to generate much improved storm surge prediction products that will depict anticipated increases in water level and flooding in ways and terms that the general public can better understand. The need to improve understanding of how to reach and inform coastal dwellers of impending storm risks became the focus of the CSAP Program. On 29 January 2013, President Barak Obama signed into law the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, better known as the Sandy Supplemental legislation. The Act provided $50.8 billion to improve and streamline federal disaster assistance provided to Sandy victims and to expand federal programs related to storm preparedness. Of the latter funds, NOAA received approximately $326 million for a wide variety of purposes. Two million dollars of NOAA’s allotment was earmarked to support the proposal from the NSGO, “Social Science in Support of Effective Risk Communication and Decision-making in the Face of Coastal Storms,” drawn from the deficiencies highlighted in the NWS assessment report. The FY 2013 budget sequester subsequently reduced this allotment to $1.832 million. Having received word that its proposal was to be funded, in late spring 2013 the NSGO requested the Sea Grant programs in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut to prepare a formal proposal for the expenditure of these funds on a targeted research and extension program consistent with the proposal’s focus. The program was to be a one-time effort of two year’s duration, with substantial reporting and oversight requirements and no possibility of a time extension. The program would focus squarely on the Sandy experience in the Tri-State Area but it was expected that its design and conduct would be such as to make it complementary to other, ongoing Sea Grant/NOAA programs and projects in coastal storms prediction and preparedness. Coastal Storm Awareness Program Development The Connecticut, New York and New Jersey Sea Grant Programs submitted an informal CSAP program proposal to the NOAA National Sea Grant Office (NSGO) on 19 June 2013 (see Appendix I). The proposed project, titled the Coastal Storm Awareness Program (CSAP), would 2 create a linked program of competitively selected research projects, extension and outreach activities and public information efforts. Conducted in partnership with the NOAA National Weather Service (NOAA NWS) and other federal, state and local government agencies, the goal of CSAP was to save lives and promote public safety by creating tools that more effectively inform people of the true severity of the danger from coastal storm hazards and increase the likelihood that residents who should remove themselves out of harm’s way actually do so or take other actions that prevent them from becoming storm casualties. Approval to formally submit the proposal in response to the FFO (NOAA Sea Grant Sandy Response – Social Science, #NOAA-OAR-SG-2013-2003808) was received in early July 2013. The proposal was submitted through Grants.gov on 31 July 2013. Identical awards in the amount of $610,666.67 were made to each of the three state Sea Grant programs in late September 2013. Of the total amount awarded ($1,832,000), $1,479,580 (81%) was earmarked for extramural research and the balance for program administration, extension and communications. The specific research projects funded, the extension activities undertaken and the communication activities used to inform the public of the program were collectively decided upon by the CSAP Management Team, comprised of the directors of the three state Sea Grant programs, advised by their senior staff. The integrated research, extension and communications CSAP effort on an important and high visibility issue was conducted on the accelerated timetable stipulated by NOAA (two years with no possibility of extension). To meet these demanding circumstances, the CSAP team employed a modified version of the historic Sea Grant approach to fulfilling its mission: 1) A directed research component involving social scientists and research institutions in fields like risk assessment, risk communication, risk visualization technologies and basic human behavioral studies; 2) An extension component integrating professionals and agencies in the coastal hazard management, prediction, warning and response community with the research process, to help guide funded projects and to augment the nature and
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