Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm, announced that it has been reselected by the City of Virginia Beach to provide ongoing resilience planning and engineering services for the sea level rise study, which began in 2015.

Dewberry recently completed the City’s Sea Level Wise adaptation strategy report. The report summarizes five years’ worth of research to understand the impacts of future flood conditions and includes recommended development planning, policy, and engineering strategies. The final integrated strategy combines community preparedness, nature-based and engineered defense interventions, and building-level strategies to adapt the city to changing flood conditions over the next 20 to 50 years. The report is a result of funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Regional Coastal Resilience Grant and the City’s Comprehensive Sea Level Rise and Recurrent Flooding Study (CSLRRF). Under the newly issued contract, Dewberry continues to support the City’s sea level rise adaptation activities.

“Working with Virginia Beach and witnessing the City’s uptake of information and efforts to shift to a more resilient community has been a truly rewarding experience,” says Dewberry Project Manager and Senior Coastal Scientist Brian Batten, Ph.D., CFM. “With our extensive team of resilience and coastal experts, we’re thankful for the opportunity to help Virginia Beach better understand its vulnerabilities and give recommendations for creating a more resilient community.”