Modernizing High-Resolution Land Cover Data for Resilience

In our recent webinar with the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), speakers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), South Carolina, and North Carolina joined Ecopia AI’s Brandon Palin to discuss how NOAA’s newly updated Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) data is being expanded in unprecedented resolution and scale thanks to AI-based mapping techniques. The conversation explored why an up-to-date, high-resolution land use dataset is needed and how it is being used by various state agencies to enhance climate resilience. This blog highlights the main points from the discussion. A recording of the webinar can be found below.

NOAA’s high-resolution land cover data from Ecopia AI

The webinar kicks off with Emily Ruetz, Director of Technology at NSGIC, who elaborates on NSGIC's mission to advance effective national coordination of geospatial information by supporting state-level cooperation. She highlights NSGIC's role as a national forum for the development of capable and future-oriented geospatial leadership. 

Next, Brandon Palin, the Senior Director for Public Sector at Ecopia AI (Ecopia), joins the discussion to introduce Ecopia, a geospatial data services company that focuses on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to extract features from the earth. Brandon highlights that geospatial data serves as the foundation of innovation for building more resilient communities, a theme that will be illustrated by the groups presenting in the webinar.

The webinar continues with Nate Herold, a Physical Scientist with NOAA's Office for Coastal Management, providing an overview of NOAA’s C-CAP program. Nate explains that the traditional data offering from C-CAP openly provided 30-meter resolution data to support a wide range of coastal management efforts, including stormwater planning, sea level rise modeling, and similar climate resilience workflows. Historically, it was expensive for NOAA to produce high-resolution land cover data, but advancements in technology, like AI, have made it more feasible for NOAA to produce high-resolution data more efficiently and affordably. This has resulted in NOAA’s new C-CAP data which delivers a 900X increase in resolution and is powered by Ecopia’s AI-based mapping technology. 

This new 1-meter resolution dataset enables coastal communities to analyze land cover features in more detail, fueling more precise models and stronger climate resilience decision-making. Nate explains that NOAA’s new high-resolution land cover datasets, which have already been developed for impervious surfaces, woody vegetation, and water features, cover approximately 1.5 million square miles, including the entire state of Alaska for the first time. NOAA plans to build on this foundation by adding more land cover categories which will be regularly updated every four to six years. Overall, this transition to higher-resolution data aims to provide more precise and useful information for local and regional planning, ultimately replacing the 30-meter products that were used for broader trend analysis in the past.

Enhancing coastal resilience in South Carolina with high-resolution data

Next, Andrew White, a GIS Manager with the South Carolina Office of Resilience (SCOR), provides an insightful overview of the agency's origins, goals, and recent initiatives. He begins by explaining that SCOR was established in 2020, evolving from the Disaster Recovery Office, which had been addressing disaster recovery from significant storms that the state had experienced in 2015, 2016, and 2018. The agency's scope has since expanded to include resilience planning, culminating in the publication of the first strategic statewide resilience and risk reduction plan in 2023. Andrew then highlights the collaborative nature of SCOR's planning process, involving over 120 stakeholders from local communities, nonprofits, and corporate partners. The agency’s flood-focused resilience plan contains 56 actionable recommendations, 19 of which emphasize the importance of data collection.

Andrew goes on to discuss the pivotal role of high-resolution land cover data in enhancing resilience planning efforts. He emphasizes that SCOR has used national land cover data to create products for regional analysis and conservation efforts to help mitigate flood risk, as well as perform land cover change analytics. Andrew emphasizes that 1-meter resolution land cover data enhances the detailed cataloging of land cover types crucial for forecasting, planning, and modeling. He explains that SCOR will use this data for land cover change analysis, carbon estimation on natural and working lands, flood modeling, and more to help create highly reliable and accurate data that communities can use to plan effectively and appropriately.

Collaborative efforts in land cover data enhancement: North Carolina's experience

Colleen Kiley, the GIS Coordination Program Manager for the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information & Analysis, then reflects on her state’s historical approach to land cover data, mentioning that until recently, North Carolina hadn’t evaluated its needs for funded land cover data since 1996. She highlights how North Carolina had relied on the National Land Cover Database for decades due to its similarity to the state's 1996 specifications and its cost-effectiveness. However, recognizing the need for modernization, a working group was tasked to explore new data sources and processes in 2018. This effort was temporarily paused by the pandemic, but was revived in 2022 after community outreach emphasized the ongoing need for updated land cover data. The 2019 report by the working group outlined 15 to 20 use cases for land cover data. These include applications such as land use planning, monitoring impervious surfaces for stormwater and flood mitigation, assessing forest health and changes in urban canopy, evaluating water quality and wetlands, and similar initiatives. 

Colleen shares that while exploring C-CAP, they connected with a group at the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) focused on wetland mapping. Since one of the state’s Geographic Information Coordinating Council (GICC) goals is to reduce duplication of effort, it was a natural fit to join forces and bring these two groups together to meet their common needs within the state’s coordination framework. Colleen explains that two of these partners have joined the webinar to discuss how they made this collaboration successful. She then hands it over to Charlie Deaton from the Division of Marine Fisheries to provide more details.

High-resolution data for wetland management

Charlie Dean, Coastal Habitat Protection Biologist with North Carolina's Division of Marine Fisheries, joins the discussion to share some practical use cases of land cover data for habitat and wetland management. He explains that their guiding document, the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan (CHPP), is mandated by North Carolina's Fisheries Reform Act of 1997 and is updated every five years. Although the Division of Marine Fisheries is the primary agency responsible for the CHPP, it is collaboratively developed with various state agencies and divisions within the DEQ to provide a comprehensive approach to coastal habitat protection.

Charlie mentions that the 2021 CHPP identified five priority issues, with a significant focus on wetland protection and habitat monitoring. This emphasis motivated their interest in high-resolution C-CAP mapping. As a result, they recommended actions to secure funding for 1-meter C-CAP data and to form an interagency work group to develop a coastal wetland mapping and monitoring plan. 

Charlie then shares some images of the Swan Quarter area in Hyde County, North Carolina, highlighting marsh loss and the migration of brackish transitional marshes landward due to sea level rise and salinity intrusion. He emphasizes that due to the threat facing North Carolina's coastal wetlands, there is a critical need to accurately quantify these changes. However, lower-resolution mapping data is inadequate for meaningful local analysis. To address this, they are pursuing 1-meter C-CAP mapping with Ecopia and NOAA, which will provide a more detailed view and allow for better quantification of wetland changes. This higher resolution will improve their understanding of where wetlands can and cannot migrate landward. Additionally, they are seeking funding for advanced salt marsh mapping products to better understand changes in these environments.

Charlie explains that submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) is important for North Carolina’s ecology, improving water quality and stabilizing sediment. However, nutrient pollution and increased chlorophyll in estuaries have reduced light availability, causing up to 80% declines in SAV habitats in some low-salinity systems. Charlie notes that better-resolution land cover mapping will also help identify and manage new nutrient sources to improve SAV levels. He then hands it over to Bill to discuss their partnership and funding efforts for these initiatives.

Improving coastal watershed management through high-resolution mapping

Bill Crowell, Director of the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership (APNEP), explains that their bi-state program operates in both North Carolina and Virginia, covering watersheds draining into various coastal sounds. APNEP collaborates with the North Carolina DEQ to find better ways to monitor and map wetlands. Bill notes that their interests align with those of North Carolina's CHPP, and they work together to implement both the CHPP and APNEP's strategic plan, known as the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP).

Bill explains that their mapping efforts for wetlands grew into a larger initiative when stakeholders convened by the North Carolina DEQ assessed wetland mapping needs. Through these discussions, they identified NOAA's C-CAP high-resolution products powered by Ecopia as a significant advancement, particularly the shift from 30-meter to 1-meter resolution, due to the 900-fold increase in detail. This is seen as a game changer by APNEP and its partners, offering enhanced capabilities beyond what has been available over the past decade. 

In October 2023, APNEP's Leadership Council decided to use funding in part from EPA infrastructure grants to expand their mapping efforts. Bill mentions that with the interest from partners in South Carolina and efforts in Virginia, they were able to collaborate on mapping watersheds that drain into those states. After discussions with NOAA, they identified potential funding opportunities through partnerships. While they covered about a quarter of the state initially, they sought additional funding from partners such as the Department of Fish and Wildlife, Wildlife Resources Commission, State Energy Office, and Office of Resiliency to ensure all of North Carolina's watersheds could be mapped under this initiative. The new high-resolution data is anticipated to meet a variety of needs among their partners, who are enthusiastic about the enhanced detail it will provide compared to previous datasets. 

Insights from Ecopia AI: geospatial data as a foundation for community resilience

In the next portion of the webinar, Brandon Palin emphasizes the value of collaboration in maximizing the utility of high-resolution land cover products, noting that different user groups have varying needs—whether for impervious surfaces, canopy data, or wetland data. He explains that by collaboratively addressing these needs, systematic solutions can be developed at state or federal levels.

The importance of up-to-date building footprints for community resilience efforts

Brandon goes on to explain how Ecopia's high-precision geospatial products benefit communities by enhancing climate resilience, beginning with building footprints. Ecopia’s AI-based systems leverage up-to-date geospatial imagery to create the most accurate building dataset in the US, comprising 173M+ high-precision building footprints. This building footprint data provides important context for insurance risk assessment, climate resilience analysis, and many other geospatial applications.

To highlight this point, Brandon shares an example from Sarasota County, Florida which experiences significant flood risk due to hurricanes. He shares that Ecopia quantified the difference in property data between Ecopia’s data with other sources and found that Ecopia extracted 41,226 building footprints in a flood zone compared to only 27,071 from OpenStreetMap and 36,918 from Microsoft, discrepancies that can translate into significant monetary and safety risks. He highlights that for flood modeling and community resilience efforts, understanding that communities evolve and databases need regular updates is essential. Without this upkeep, models may become outdated and less effective.

Comprehensive land cover data to power predictive models

Brandon also stresses the importance of higher-resolution products for analyzing different land cover types within specific areas. This enables a better understanding of spatial relationships and enhances the capability to build predictive models for assessing natural disaster impacts, in coastal communities and beyond. Ecopia’s 3D Nationwide Land Cover is the most comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date land cover vector map of the United States for next-generation analytics and decision-making. It includes height-attribute features such as buildings, trees, and bridges, as well as standard 2D features like railways, sidewalks, pavements, parking lots, and more.

Brandon emphasizes the importance of discerning differences in data quality and acknowledges that transitioning to higher-resolution data doesn't resolve all challenges. Focusing on vectors becomes essential to gain deeper insights. For example, NOAA's detailed impervious categories provide a more accurate portrayal compared to broader built-up density data. This level of detail is evident when comparing the two 1-meter datasets in the image below.

Examining socioeconomic resiliency throughout the US

Highlighting a recent report from the Joint Economic Committee, Brandon notes that flooding in the United States costs between $179.8B and $496B annually, which is significantly more than previous estimates. The focus then shifts to how data can help understand and support vulnerable communities. According to NOAA, 22% of the US coastal population shows signs of social vulnerability, indicating a critical need to utilize data for identifying and addressing areas at the highest risk.

Brandon describes how Ecopia has integrated various datasets, such as census block information and FEMA's risk and vulnerability indexes, to conduct a comprehensive analysis that assesses community flood risks. This involves not only identifying flood-prone areas, but also analyzing how land cover types like impervious surfaces and tree canopy relate to socioeconomic factors such as median household income. Using Charleston as an example, Brandon illustrates how areas with lower vegetation and higher impervious surfaces correlate with higher vulnerability to coastal flooding, highlighting a significant socioeconomic and environmental impact. This detailed analysis underscores the importance of geospatial data in preparing for future challenges and effectively deploying resources allocated through initiatives like the bipartisan infrastructure law.

To learn more about Ecopia’s coastal analysis of flood risk in the US, click here.

Harnessing high-precision data for more resilient and equitable communities

Brandon concludes the webinar by presenting alarming statistics: 42 million people are living in coastal flood-risk areas, 275,000 square miles of land is at risk, there is $7.9 trillion in exposed building value, and $19 billion in exposed agricultural value. These numbers underscore the critical need to understand and plan for community resilience, emphasizing the substantial consequences of inadequate preparation.

For more information about how NOAA’s newly updated C-CAP data is being used to reduce flood risk and enhance climate resilience in communities, watch the webinar below.