Hazardous weather is just one of the many threats to our nation's coastal communities. The NOAA Coastal Services Center provides state and local coastal programs with the tools, data, and training needed to effectively plan for, monitor, and respond to the challenges associated with coastal resource management.

The NOAA Coastal Services Center partners with state and local organizations to address coastal resource management issues, particularly the issues of hazards and coastal development.

To begin the process, a state or local organization contacts the Center with a coastal management issue. These issues vary greatly, from a desire to map oyster beds to a need for increased accuracy in flood predictions. The Center reaches across NOAA (and other organizations and federal agencies when appropriate) to provide the tools, information, expertise, or data for these projects that might otherwise be unavailable. The Center’s primary areas of expertise include data and information, training, technology, and social science tools.

Center projects are often intensive efforts that last years. At the conclusion of the project, the Center uses the resulting products and the lessons learned to help other locales that need similar assistance.

The Center also works on projects designed to benefit the nation’s coastal management community as a whole. These efforts include a strong training program that offers numerous classes to meet the technical and management needs of coastal managers. Most of these classes can be brought to the coastal community, and many are also offered at the Center’s home office in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Center also creates numerous software programs and computer models that help coastal programs make better use of available data. These programs and models are available free of charge from the organization’s Web site. Coastal Services, an award-winning trade publication for the nation’s coastal managers, is a bi-monthly publication produced by the Center.

To learn more about the organization, visit the Coastal Services Center Web site.