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Barataria Basin Program Performance Assessment (BBPPA)

Project Overview
Louisiana’s coastal restoration program has been in existence for over 30 years and local, state, and federal entities have implemented a tremendous number of projects to sustain and restore the coast. The goal of BBPPA is to determine whether the coastal program is addressing key problems such as loss of land, habitats, and key species that rely on them, where and how collective restoration projects are resulting in changes, and where and how to address both legacy and emerging issues. The assessment is designed to provide insight on system change and collective project effects on quantitative performance metrics that can be used to track progress against goals and objectives set forth by the Coastal Master Plan.

Project Work and Royal Solutions
In the first phase of the assessment, the Royal team developed a Data Inventory. Our team located and documented data associated with constructed restoration projects in the Barataria Basin by using personal and professional contacts to acquire project information that was not otherwise available. In addition to documenting project design parameters, physical features and characteristics, and as-built data, we also identified and documented available data sets that describe shoreline change, water levels, and other indicators of ecosystem health and function. Our team documented gaps in the available data and became familiar with the existing information as a critical first step in assessing program performance.

Seeing value in this effort, CPRA enlisted the Royal team to execute the second phase of the assessment. The purpose of the Analytical Design and Template was to develop an analytical approach—based on the datasets identified in the Data Inventory—to assess the cumulative performance of restoration projects implemented in the Barataria Basin. In this phase, we identified drivers of system change such as subsidence and sea level rise and quantitative performance metrics related to hydrology, morphology, flora, and fauna that could be used to better understand program performance. We also documented potential data sources and other key information needs. Given our team members’ analytical expertise, we described the methodology recommended to analyze data, including options for partitioning the basin to ensure data could be analyzed at multiple spatial scales. Our team is intimately familiar with similar assessments and evaluations previously undertaken in the basin, and therefore we were cognizant to recommend methodologies to build upon them rather than duplicate other efforts. Understanding the needs of CPRA and knowing that one size does not fit all when it comes to reporting outcomes, our team thought outside the box and recommended several ways in which the resulting data and information could effectively be linked to the goals and objectives of the Coastal Master Plan and communicated to end users.

Seeing Royal’s deep understanding of both the available data and CPRA’s needs, the Royal team was asked to launch the third phase of BBPPA, Data Synthesis and Initial Assessment. In close coordination with CPRA, our team identified the final list of system drivers and performance metrics along with available datasets to support them. Given the wide range of topics and disciplines needed for this assessment, and understanding the importance of using a consistent approach across data types to the extent practicable, our team assigned subject matter experts most familiar with each topical area to compile and review available datasets to ensure we understood the spatial coverage, time period of the data record, methodologies used to collect/generate the data, and nuances of the data that could affect the assessment. We coordinated not only within the project team but also with CPRA on preferred options for synthesizing the data to ensure consistency across such varied data and consistency in approaches preferred by CPRA (e.g., those used by CRMS, BICM, etc.). Our team then began synthesizing available data and documenting the synthesis process used for each dataset, why some datasets initially identified for inclusion were removed from further consideration (e.g., spatial coverage was too small, or the time period of data collection was too short), and any other notable nuances of the data. We felt this was critical to ensure the efforts could be repeated not only for Barataria Basin but also to serve as a framework for assessments in other coastal basins. Using a subset of the synthesized data, the Royal team will test multiple analytical approaches to identify and document which approach(es) yield the most meaningful outcomes for assessing the effects of drivers and the collective restoration program on a subset of performance metrics related to system response.

BBPPA is unique in that, while initially focused exclusively on the Barataria Basin, the Royal team is developing a framework and workflow that can serve as a template for other basins. By providing a consistent yet flexible approach, the goal is to enable performance assessments for the entire Louisiana coast, providing foundational information to support a robust and evolving adaptive management process across CPRA’s restoration program. While our team is focusing the initial assessment on addressing the information needs of CPRA, we will summarize and present the outcomes in a way that is useful to additional end users such as state agencies, federal agencies, and other restoration practitioners.