The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has approved US$1.5 million in grant funding to facilitate a three-year project to map almost 10,000 square kilometres of vulnerable Caribbean coastline using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) .

Credit: Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre. Not for use without written permission.

The project which is to be excuted by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC),  aims to increase the use of technology in the building of climate resilience throughout the region. In the last quarter of 2017, the Centre acquired its very own LIDAR equipment through funding from the USAID Climate Change Adaptation Program (CCAP).

The CDB grant, which was announced by the CDB on Monday May 28, will provide resources for the preparation of an Intellectual Property Policy (IPP), the creation of a product development and marketing strategy for the Centre, as well as the training of 38 end-users from the Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) in the use of LiDAR data.

“Generating quality scientific data and information products, data sharing, and ease of data access and transfer, are important aspects of building climate resilience across the region because they support an improved understanding of climate risks and impacts,” said Daniel Best, Director of CDB’s Projects Department.

“LiDAR-based mapping technology can therefore assist the region in addressing some of the problems being experienced, due to the absence of geo-spatial data for decision-making, and improve the capacity of stakeholders to make better-informed decisions, for more effective management of natural hazard and climate risks,” he said.

LiDAR is remote sensing technology that used to obtain highly accurate elevation measurements of the earth’s surface. The technology is capable of simultaneously gathering  topographic and bathymetric (depth of the sea floor) data, which are to be used to provide  detailed information of the region’s coastal areas, reefs and sea floor to facilitate flood and innundation mapping among other products.

The project is expected to fill a critical data and information gaps in efforts to design new climate-resilient investments, retrofit existing infrastructure, support coastal zone management, identify natural hazards and formulate disaster risk management strategies throughout the region. The project will also allow governments to move forward on projects that were previously hampered by the absence of project specific, high-quality spatial datasetsand the high cost of LIDAR services.

The LiDAR project is specifically aimed at providing CDB’s member countries and the region with the data sets at to significantly reduced costs.