Kestrel Land Trust and Green Burial Massachusetts were looking to find a property to establish a conservation cemetery (green burial) in western and/or central Massachusetts. GZA was tasked to conduct a suitability analysis for the conservation cemetery and create a web application to view the results. The GIS analysis was conducted across five counties (Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire) totaling 668,639 land parcels. Using publicly available GIS data, the analysis included identifying criteria for the cemetery site prioritization and used the criteria to establish a baseline and to exclude properties. The selected properties were then ranked based on feasibility characteristics and a suitability score was calculated. A digital web experience application (Experience Builder) was created to showcase the suitability results and allow the clients to view and filter the remaining properties for conservation cemetery site selection. The presentation will provide an overview of the project process, challenges we faced, and take aways.
Soil erosion and slope instability issues are a major concern for New England state Departments of Transportation (DOT), roadway planners, and designers, impacting the cost to maintain transportation networks and other critical infrastructure. Effective screening tools used for modeling, monitoring, and forecasting erosion can aid in assessing erosion and slope failure susceptibility, which is critical for regional operations and planning.
GZA developed a screening-level tool to identify roadways vulnerability to erosion and slope failures based on a number of factors, using the latest GIS Enterprise technology. The work is being performed in collaboration with the New England Transportation Consortium (NETC). The project objective was to develop a multi-scale, multi-season land-based erosion and landslide modeling and monitoring toolkit for infrastructure management for all the New England states (including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut).
The prototype Esri ArcGIS toolkit was developed for the MaineDOT based on Maine’s state-wide GIS data such as topography, land use, surficial geology, and roadway system inventory. Various environmental parameters were considered as risk factors for roadways, including proximity to surface water body, proximity to the 100-year floodplain, and slope geometric information.
A large set of slope stability simulations were assembled to capture key geotechnical parameters including soil type, material strength, and groundwater depth. This set formed the basis of a “Response Function” that was used to interpolate to all the grid cells in the study area. The end deliverables of this project, i.e., the Esri GIS web viewer, included multiple risk analysis data layers for users to interact with and identify high, medium, and low hazard areas, for screening, analysis, and planning purposes for the Maine DOT.
The innovative approach developed for this project is applicable to other states or even regions and adaptable for future improvements such as inclusion of climate change considerations.
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.
