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144 communities in Alaska are threatened by flooding, erosion, and permafrost degradation, yet many do not have access to site specific information about risk. Risk assessment requires baseline data, historical assessment, forward looking modeling, and an understanding of community exposure. Projects to collect data or conduct risk assessments are completed by a variety of partners and funders. This website provides access to a dashboard to track data and assessments to support decision-making by Tribal organizations, communities, agencies, and partners for the collective “all hands on deck” response to these environmental threats.
We define a risk assessment as a scientific and engineering assessment of the magnitude and timing of threats from flooding, erosion, and permafrost degradation hazards on the natural and built environment and an analysis of potential solutions.
Data and risk assessment work can take many years to complete and assessments rely on having valid baseline or historical data to be completed. For these reasons, this website tracks projects to collect data and assess risk through the project life cycle. Project tracking helps with awareness, efficiency, and reducing duplication of work. In general, most fields are categorized as Recommended, Not Recommended, Funded, In progress, Complete, or Unknown. Dates of completion and anticipated completion as well as links to access data and reports are also listed.
This site allows any user to answer a variety of questions about the status of data and risk assessments. By using data filters, you can query the database based on Regional Native Association, level of threat according to the Denali Commission Statewide Threat Assessment, and many other factors.
Agencies can use this website to inform projects to collect data or complete risk assessments. This can be done on an individual community level, but also by looking at certain regions or data types. Let’s say an agency collects bathymetry, but needs to know where the highest priority areas are to collect bathymetry to plan for future years. They can look up which communities are considered at a higher rank of threat which also need bathymetric data. Although this website is useful for high level planning, any site specific planning should be coordinated with local governing entities and community leaders.
Community leaders and administrators can use this website to access data and risk assessments for their community and understand what additional information may be necessary to understand and communicate their risk.
This short 15 minute video demonstrates some of the main features of this site and should help new users get oriented to it.
This catalog links to many partner websites and data portals. These portals can also be accessed directly for specific information on data types:
State of Alaska Elevation Data Portal https://elevation.alaska.gov/
DGGS Coastal Hazards Program https://dggs.alaska.gov/hazards/coastal/index.html
NOAA Digital Coast https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/dav.html
NOAA Tides & Currents https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/map/
Alaska Water Level Watch http://www.awlw.aoos.org/
NOAA VDatum https://vdatum.noaa.gov/welcome.html
*If you are aware of projects that aren’t represented on this website, but should be included, please contact the website administrator to make updates.