The Cape Cod shoreline is vulnerable to erosion, coastal storm flooding, and sea level rise. Current regulations, including the Massachusetts State Building Code, are based on FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas as delineated on Flood Insurance Rate Maps. These are developed based on historical flood data and do not consider a future with rising sea levels and intensifying coastal storms. As sea levels continue to rise and storms become more frequent and severe, the limitations of relying on outdated FEMA maps become increasingly apparent. This underscores an urgent need to revise regulations to account for future flood risks.
To address this need, the Cape Cod Commission has designed model bylaws around a concept called the Coastal Resilience Zone. These coastal resiliency regulations allow for flexibility by encouraging Towns to select the best available data to identify future flooding. This ‘best data’ may be the Massachusetts Coastal Flood Risk Model (MCFRM), or an updated model as more reliable data become available. In all cases, applicants must meet current flood resistant construction standards as set in the State Building Code.
As staff developed the resiliency regulations, it soon became apparent that the available MCFRM data and the current enforceable construction standard did not exist in formats that could easily be compared. Learn how we solved this problem by creating design flood elevation layers and see how they fit into a larger suite of Cape Cod Commission map tools that help to illustrate the potential effects of historic and future floods.
