Coastal decision-makers' perspectives on updating storm surge guidance tools

This paper reports on the process and results of focus groups conducted as stakeholder engagement for a two-year, marine extension agency-sponsored interdisciplinary project in coastal Louisiana, USA. The project involved refining the topographic features (eg flood protection infrastructure) of a computational storm surge model using local knowledge of elevation data. Coastal Louisiana experiences continual changes to the built and natural environment and persistent land loss, necessitating frequent adjustments to real-time storm surge and restoration planning models to make them more useful for decision-makers. Stakeholder involvement ensured accurate updates to the real-time computational system and accessible and understandable modelling results displayed by an interactive decision-support tool. The findings provide insights and recommendations from various practitioners that are applicable to decision-support model and tool development for coastal hazard emergency response.