Past Challenges
The Challenges sought innovative products, approaches, and workforce development programs from anywhere in the world that address resilience topics below and can be demonstrated in the Hampton Roads region of Southeastern Virginia, can be built into economically viable businesses, and are scalable to other communities.
Water
Management
Cost-effective management of ground- storm- and/or tidal water, either as affordable short-term mitigations or low-maintenance long-term options in urban environments with high water tables.
Data
Analytics
Big data analytics, integration, and accessibility for multiple applications to help coastal community stakeholders maintain public safety, meet logistics needs, protect property, as well as enhance quality of life among other applications.
Buildings
Protection
Structural or non-structural alternatives beyond traditional approaches such as costly house elevation that individual homeowners could buy that protects buildings for 15 – 30 years in the flood environment, or that are cost effective protections against the higher frequency, lower magnitude recurrent flooding.
Critical Systems
Functionality
Portable systems deployable within 2 hours and able to provide 72 hours of continuous functionality to critical services.
Disconnected
Neighborhoods
Enhance the economic prosperity of low/moderate income urban neighborhoods which have been disconnected physically, economically and digitally from the rest of a thriving city.
Resilience
Workforce
Innovative workforce development solutions that offer pathways to train, retrain, upskill, or reskill workers, as well as connect them to the demands of employers around any of the five resilience topics described above.
Solution Builders
Learn more from six solution builders of the past $1.5M Coastal Community Resilience Challenges
Sign up for updates about their projects.
Building Resilient Solutions
Reducing flood-damage through alternative retrofit methods for existing buildings.
Constructis
Harnessing kinetic energy from traffic to power emergency services.
Grow Oyster Reefs
Reducing shoreline erosion and flooding with innovative reef tiles that attract oysters faster than competitor solutions.
InfraSGA
Reducing nuisance flooding in constrained urban environment without massive infrastructure overhauls.
Landscape Resilience Partnership
Training resilience workforce to design, install and maintain flood-reducing solutions.
Resilience Enterprise Solutions
Raising the bar for workforce training in the home raising industry.
Natrx
The company will develop and launch its mobile manufacturing units, which can be used to produce custom shoreline protection structures to prevent flooding.
Re:Public
The company will launch its map-based risk communication platform to help non-mapping professionals to track real-time flooding risk.
StormSensor
The company will create features for its stormwater monitoring software and hardware products. It provides communities with real-time tidal and storm analysis.
Virginia PACE Authority
The organization, which provides financing solutions for flood mitigation and resilience improvements, will expand its outreach and create an open-market platform.
WeatherCheck
The company will expand its product to include pluvial and fluvial flood threats, which now continuously monitors properties for severe weather damage and loss.
Building Resilient Solutions
Reducing flood-damage through alternative retrofit methods for existing buildings.
Constructis
Harnessing kinetic energy from traffic to power emergency services.
InfraSGA
Reducing nuisance flooding in constrained urban environment without massive infrastructure overhauls.
Grow Oyster Reefs
Reducing shoreline erosion and flooding with innovative reef tiles that attract oysters faster than competitor solutions.
Wetlands Watch
Training resilience workforce to design, install and maintain flood-reducing solutions.
Resilience Enterprise Solutions
Raising the bar for workforce training in the home raising industry.
GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.
GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. is a 700-person, corporation with offices located throughout the U.S. GZA’s 45-person, specialized and multidisciplinary practice in Natural Hazard Risk Management, Resilience and Climate Adaptation focuses on hazard risk management, climate change mitigation, disaster response and recovery and resilience and climate adaptation planning for critical infrastructure, municipalities and state agencies.
FloodMapp
Brisbane-based FloodMapp provides users with warning time and personalized messaging before a flood while providing insurers live flood mapping, predictive claims analysis, damage curves to estimate damages and reinsurance requirements, claims logistics, and resource planning. Their real time, asset specific flood forecasting and mapping products help improve all phases of the emergency management process: before, during and after.
FernLeaf Interactive
FernLeaf Interactive, a private corporation co-developed the Federal resilience process for understanding risk and building resilience to natural hazards. They have partnered with Esri to tailor this process to the local government level on the ArcGIS platform. Their collaborative with NEMAC actively supports local-scale community resilience directly or in partnership with A&E firms throughout the United States.
Baird Innovation Engineered
Baird USA is an organization of 85 scientists, engineers and designers specializing in professional services exclusively for projects at the land-water interface. Baird undertakes projects ranging in size from small planning studies to designs of large development projects with construction costs in excess of $150 million, and their niche modeling expertise is frequently applied.