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Cocoa Beach hears vulnerability assessment update as city prepares to seek resilience funding
Summary
Consultants told the commission they have completed data acquisition and mapped about 200 flood scenarios for Cocoa Beach critical assets; sensitivity analysis is near completion and the final report is due in April, enabling the city to apply for Resilient Florida funds.
Consultants from Geosyntech and Applied Ecology updated the Cocoa Beach City Commission on a DEP-prescribed vulnerability assessment that will underpin future flood-adaptation projects and funding applications.
"This is just kind of a middle of the road update to tell you what we've done so far," said Scott Ditchy of Geosyntech, summarizing the work completed to date. He said the team compiled a geodatabase of the city’s critical assets and ran exposure analyses for coastal and storm-related flooding under current and future (2050 and 2080) scenarios. "We have something like 200 different maps, showing the different flooding scenarios in the city," he said.
The assessment, conducted under Florida statutes and reviewed with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), assigns flood-risk levels to assets by modeling inundation percentages and a sensitivity analysis that will inform project prioritization. Ditchy said the sensitivity analysis was nearly finished and would be submitted to the city for review before being sent to DEP. If DEP approves the completed vulnerability assessment, the city will be positioned to apply for implementation funding through the Resilient Florida program.
Consultants identified four primary asset categories for the analysis: transportation (including evacuation routes), critical infrastructure (utilities, wastewater, communications), emergency and community facilities, and natural, cultural and historic resources. They described the next steps as overlaying modeled flood scenarios with the asset inventory, identifying high-priority adaptation projects (including items that may already be on the city's capital-improvement plan), and conducting additional public outreach prior to finalizing the report.
The consultants said they expect to complete the final vulnerability-assessment report in April and return to present final results to the commission the following May. No formal commission action was taken at the update; the presentation was informational and intended to set the schedule and expectations for forthcoming outreach and funding steps.
