Adapting a city’s infrastructure to be safe and more resilient to climate change

Miami Beach Sea Level Rise Program

Starting in 2012, the City of Miami Beach began to study the effects of sea level rise on its municipal infrastructure. Through those studies and planning efforts, the City established various design criteria to drive resiliency and adaptation to sea level rise in its capital improvements, prioritizing flood risk management, public safety, and reliability of key city services.

With growing challenges to stormwater management (posed by the threat of climate change and sea level rise), the City of Miami Beach modified their stormwater master plan, converting from a gravity-based system to a system utilizing pump stations and outfalls.

Projects developed from the stormwater master plan included construction of seawalls and pump stations and installation of stormwater outfall structures and erosion control. Our team supported a wide range of federal, state, and local permits, which we successfully expedited to meet construction schedules and avoid lengthy federal consultation processes for endangered species.

The plan includes permitting and design of over 40 pump stations, outfalls, and seawall. We designed and permitted a living shoreline along Indian Creek Drive and performed stormwater modeling to determine the level of service required for a 10-year design storm for three stormwater pump stations and a drainage basin. These localized improvements are meant to work in coordination with larger, future, innovative regional systems, such as potential flood mitigation measures.

With these measures in place, the Miami Beach will have stormwater infrastructure they can rely on.