Living Shorelines for Coastal Resilience: Developing a Decision Support Framework to Analyze Coral Reef Restoration Sites

Abstract

Communities around the world seek coastal resilience solutions, as storms increase in intensity and high tide flooding occurs more frequently. With these changes, demand grows to understand and measure the impacts of ecosystem protection and restoration efforts. While previous studies investigated the role of coral reefs in shoreline protection, few offer a comprehensive approach to inform effective restoration and resilience decisions. This research focuses on developing a decision support framework to analyze coral restoration sites and inform coastal resilience decisions through a matrix comparison approach. The research design assembles a literature review, analytic framework development, and analysis built upon case study sites, coastal resilience data, and an information matrix to communicate results. Application of the framework revealed a lack of consistent data across case study sites and points to focus areas for future research. The methodology of the decision support framework offers a general approach, applicable to a broad range of living shorelines and restoration scenarios.