Over the past decade, Rutgers University has developed a suite of data visualization and mapping decision support tools that offer critical support to end users in planning for future climate conditions, assessing climate change-related hazards, and communicating risks and hazards known as NJADAPT.
“Hurricane Sandy’s impacts along the New Jersey coast made clear the importance of understanding the risk of coastal flooding,” said Lucas Marxen, associate director of the Rutgers NJAES Office of Research Analytics and a member of the NJADAPT team. “In the 10 years since Sandy, the NJADAPT Team has worked to provide data and decision support tools to help communities prepare and become more resilient.”
With input from many of our end users, the Rutgers team has completed a thorough enhancement of many of these tools including –
- use of new and updated data,
- integration of guidance for applying the tools for local planning and decision-making, and
- development of new features including those that link to municipal land use planning, local public health planning and planning associated with hazard mitigation.
As part of this continual improvement effort, the Rutgers NJADAPT team is working on the development of a new Climate Navigator platform which will work to integrate and enhance the data, tools, and guidance provided to end users.
Enhancements include:
- New Jersey Public Health Adapt – An online tool for exploring the potential impacts of climate change on public health.
- New Jersey Local Planning Navigator – The first of our guided tools to help municipalities develop Climate Change-Related Hazard Vulnerability Assessments under the NJ Municipal Land Use Law.
- Updates to NJADAPT Tools – Overview of some of the updated datasets and analyses included in our existing NJADAPT tools.
- Hazardous Materials/Substances Commercial Facilities Flood Analysis – A statewide analysis of commercial facilities with hazardous materials/substances that could be impacted by flooding, with correlation to Overburdened Communities.
- Statewide FEMA 100-Year Flood Zone +3ft Data Layer – Upcoming release of a statewide GIS data layer for planning purposes to visualize the FEMA 100-Year Flood Zone plus and additional 3 feet of flooding as specified under the NJDEP’s Inland Flood Rule.
“A main function of the NJ Climate Change Resource Center is to provide useable science to help New Jersey communities and decision makers plan for the cascading impacts of warmer temperatures, more intense precipitation, and sea level rise,” said Marjorie Kaplan, co-director of the center.
“We have been working together on issues related to preparedness in the face of sea-level rise in New Jersey since before Sandy, but that seminal event pushed efforts into overdrive,” she continued. “Expanding NJADAPT gives communities more tools to use to prepare for the climate-related impacts we’re already experiencing and will continue to see in the future.”
The New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center was established by statute in January 2020 to “create and support the use of impartial and actionable science to advance government, public, private, and nongovernmental sector efforts to adapt to, and mitigate, a changing climate.” University partners include the Bloustein School, Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, N.J. Agricultural Experiment Station, N.J. Climate Change Alliance, Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, and School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.