Funding: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via Woolpert.
Partners: NOAA's Office for Coastal Management, Coastal States Organization.
Committee Overlap: No Adverse Impact, Coastal Issues.
The Coastal No Adverse Impact Handbook (CNAI), published in 2007 by ASFPM in partnership with NOAA's Office for Coastal Management, articulates an approach to floodplain stewardship that addresses flood risk in coastal areas by: 1) providing technical guidance for communities to implement higher floodplain management standards for their citizens and to plan for and mitigate against increasing flood risk now and in the future; and 2) promoting the good neighbor policy of managing land use to avoid harm to watershed neighbors upstream and downstream. The CNAI Handbook extends ASFPM’s No Adverse Impact (NAI) floodplain management philosophy to mitigate current and future losses, costs and human suffering caused by flooding, and protect the natural and beneficial functions of floodplains – all without causing adverse impacts.
Over the past 25 years, ASFPM has made significant investment in creating and continuously updating its suite of No Adverse Impact Approach to Floodplain Management technical assistance resources, including a series of How-To Guides for each of the seven building blocks (2014-2019), and most recently, the NAI Legal Guide for Flood Risk Management (2023), which lays out the legal foundation for the NAI approach.
This NOAA Digital Coast Connects project, in partnership with NOAA's Office for Coastal Management and the Coastal States Organization, focuses on updating and reimagining Coastal NAI resources and training. This new training will be targeted to local government end-users, providing step-by-step guidance on how to effectively implement actions related to the seven building blocks in the CNAI handbook.
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