Measuring Project Impact
Nourishment projects usually involve physical, environmental and economic objectives. Typical physical measures include dry beach width, remaining post-storm sand volume, post-storm damage avoidance assessments and aqueous sand volume. Environmental measures include marine life distribution, habitat and population counts. Economic impacts include recreation, tourism, flood and "disaster" prevention. Techniques for incorporating nourishment projects into flood insurance costs and disaster assistance remain controversial.
The ability to predict the performance of a beach nourishment project is best for a project constructed on a long, straight shoreline without the complications of inlets or engineered structures. In addition, predictability is better for overall performance, e.g., average shoreline change, rather than shoreline change at a specific location.
Nourishment can affect eligibility in the National Flood Insurance Program and federal disaster assistance.
Read more about this topic: Beach Nourishment
Famous quotes containing the words measuring, project and/or impact:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)
“The candidate tells us we are the “backbone of the State,” and we know that it is true, not because we are possessed of certain endowed virtues, but because we are a majority and have the vote.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)