Coastal Resilience

When we are at full capacity, everything feels harder. Outdated assumptions and emotions make new science and data harder to process. Competing priorities make it difficult to see what matters clearly. The capital improvement process is already a model that simplifies and organizes decision making. The easier path to building coastal resilience is to embed resilience principles and pathways in the existing process. The most essential actions should be the easiest. APTIM’s goal is to help owners and managers avoid information burnout or feeling incapable of taking right action. Active decision making is increasingly important as new funding sources become available for shovel ready resilient projects.

APTIM’s Mission To Help Our Coastal Clients

Building coastal resilience requires a combination of future conditions policy development, master planning and asset management, and design and implementation of shoreline and flood protection projects and energy reliability and resilience projects. Future conditions policy and plans should address resilience standards, operational changes and elevation requirements for tidal flood barriers, drainage systems and structures based on increased rainfall, sea level rise and saltwater intrusion. Shoreline protection including beach re-nourishment, seawalls and bulkheads and nature-based solutions is necessary to reduce sheet flow of flood waters into neighborhoods. Enhanced storm water and pumping systems are necessary to address seepage, increased rainfall flooding and address water quality concerns. Saltwater intrusion of landfills and contaminated areas poses new risks and challenges for remediation. The severity of sea level rise impacts is dependent upon the emissions mitigation and prompts the need for investment by coastal communities in clean energy and electrification.

APTIM’s coastal resilience teams develops risk assessments and return on investment analyses to simplify and justify decision-making. We assist in planning and bundling capital projects to provide full protection and organizing shovel ready projects that address highly visible problems, existing priorities, and compliance requirements. Our team also assists in planning funding strategies and managing capital and grant programs. The overall process is simplified by using checklists and framework for capital proposals customized by role and sector. Performance is tracked and iteratively enhances through program management based on financial and operational targets for resilience projects.

Climate Action and Adaptation Planning and Program Support

• Anti-corrosive material infrastructure design
• Economic impact assessments
• Grants management and mitigation funding
• Heat mitigation
• Long range transportation planning including hazard-based risk and resilience scenarios
• Mitigation and adaptation strategies
• Multi-hazard mitigation
• Outreach campaigns and staff training
• Resilient design and construction management for roads, bridges, tunnels, transit, and rail
• Resilient housing and floodproofing
• Stakeholder engagement and collaboration
• Tidal and storm surge vulnerability assessments
• Water and wastewater energy efficiency program management
• Wildfire protection

Holistic Implementation of Energy & Water Infrastructure Resilience

• Energy assurance plans
• Energy-efficient flood control systems
• Environmental resource and water management
• Floodproofing
• Grants management and mitigation funding
• Hydrodynamic and hydrologic modeling
• Large-scale adaptation through redevelopment
• On-demand decarbonization services
• Resiliency hubs and resilient housing
• Sector-based policy and infrastructure assessments
• Stakeholder outreach
• Systems integrator for end-to-end resilience solutions

UPDATE: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), formerly known as H.R. 3684 – U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), has funding available for addressing critical infrastructure improvements including those for coastal resilience. Learn More

For coastal communities, APTIM provides grants management and climate adaptation expertise for transportation systems, coastal, ports, and marine infrastructure, housing and energy sectors, and weaves together practical incremental solutions for critical needs utilizing lessons learned while leading the largest post-disaster and recovery construction management projects in the nation and while collaborating across a diversity of interdependent disciplines.

The term ‘resilience improvement’ means the use of materials or structural or nonstructural techniques, including natural infrastructure that allow a project to better anticipate, prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and to withstand and respond to disruptions; and to be better able to continue to serve the primary function of the project during and after weather events and natural disasters for the expected life of the project; or reduce the magnitude and duration of impacts of current and future weather events and natural disasters to a project; or have the absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, and recoverability to decrease project vulnerability to current and future weather events or natural disasters. Learn more.