U.S. Coastal Research Program

SUPPORTS 50 FUTURE COASTAL ENGINEERS & SCIENTISTS

37 ACADEMIC STUDIES INITIATED

The U.S. Coastal Research Program (USCRP) was formed to develop, coordinate and enable a national science plan to address growing needs of coastal communities. USCRP is a collaboration of federal agencies, academics and stakeholders to identify research needs, foster research opportunities, enhance funding for academic programs and promote technology transfer. The program identifies coastal research priorities, advances knowledge in coastal sciences, expands the coastal workforce and improves communication of coastal hazards to communities. Since inception, the USCRP has initiated 37 academic studies supporting more than 50 students. The USCRP is facilitating the DUring Nearshore Event eXperiment (DUNEX), a collaborative field data collection effort to better understand during-storm processes and impacts, as well as post-storm recovery. The DUNEX 2019 Pilot Study included 18 research teams, 14 students, 36 hours of classroom and field training, six technical talks open to researchers and the general public, and 13 virtual “coffee breaks” designed for researcher collaboration.

PROBLEM: Coastal researchers noted a decline in the number of U.S. coastal research graduates, which directly impacts the ability to expand coastal engineering in the U.S. However, the need for coastal researchers continues to grow as coastal populations increase, storms become more intense and infrastructure continues to age. Meanwhile, coastal research funding is declining, increasing the need to improve and broaden collaboration efforts to stretch research dollars.

SOLUTION: A collaboration of federal agencies, academia and stakeholders was formed to identify coastal research priorities, foster research opportunities and enhance funding for academic programs. The effort provides a mechanism for coastal research collaboration, and identifies gaps in knowledge requiring R&D that can be prioritized and accomplished through combined federal, academic, and non-governmental partnering. It will also expand the coastal workforce.

IMPACT: One of three primary priorities identified by the collaboration was the measurement of processes and impacts during storms. The DUNEX 2019 pilot study and 2020 full experiments will allow coastal researchers to collect observations and run concurrent models during storms to improve knowledge of and prediction capabilities for storm processes and impacts. Considering all three coastal priority themes, USCRP has initiated 37 academic studies for more than 50 students, two of whom were subsequently hired by the Corps after completing their doctorates through USCRP funding.