Assessing National Park Asset Flood Risk: Retreat, Adapt, Fortify?

The briefing describes a multi-year project to assess the vulnerability of National Park Service (NPS) coastal assets to hazards such as sea level rise and storm surges. The methodology separates vulnerability into 'exposure' (the likelihood of a hazard hitting an asset) and 'sensitivity' (the potential damage once the hazard occurs). By integrating this data into existing asset management databases, the project provides park managers with a science-based menu of adaptation options—such as elevating, relocating, or decommissioning structures—to optimize the allocation of limited maintenance funds based on an asset's mission priority.

• A preliminary analysis of National Park Service assets exposed to one meter of sea level rise identified high-exposure assets valued at approximately $23 billion, with the highest concentrations in the Northeast and Southeast regions.
• The vulnerability assessment protocol calculates vulnerability as the sum of exposure and sensitivity. Exposure is determined by mapping assets against hazards including FEMA flooding data, NOAA storm surge models, sea level rise inundation, coastal erosion buffers, and historical flooding data.
• Sensitivity analysis evaluates the flood damage potential of an asset based on its physical characteristics, such as storm resistance, protective engineering, and the threshold elevation of the building relative to the local base flood elevation.
• The project aims to provide actionable data by embedding vulnerability scores directly into the NPS asset management database, allowing managers to identify specific adaptation actions—such as elevating, relocating, protecting, or decommissioning—to reduce either exposure or sensitivity.
• While sea level rise is a critical component of the long-term projections (extending to 2050), the majority of the current exposure score for most coastal parks is driven by immediate hazards such as hurricanes and coastal erosion.
• The vulnerability scoring is based purely on physical characteristics and does not include the 'mission importance' of an asset; instead, mission priority is used by managers after the scoring to decide whether to invest in resilience or pursue decommissioning/retreat.

APA

Environmental and Energy Study Institute (2020). Assessing National Park Asset Flood Risk: Retreat, Adapt, Fortify? https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_041420.pdf

Chicago

Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Assessing National Park Asset Flood Risk: Retreat, Adapt, Fortify? 2020. https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_041420.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Environmental and Energy Study Institute |title=Assessing National Park Asset Flood Risk: Retreat, Adapt, Fortify? |date=April 2020 |url=https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_041420.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{environmentalandenergystudyinstitute2020assessing, author = {{Environmental and Energy Study Institute}}, title = {{Assessing National Park Asset Flood Risk: Retreat, Adapt, Fortify?}}, institution = {Environmental and Energy Study Institute}, year = {2020}, month = apr, url = {https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_041420.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }