A trio of environmental engineers, two with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the third with the University of Maryland, has developed a way to illustrate the impact of sea level rise isolation associated with global warming. In their paper published in Nature Climate Change, Tom Logan, M. J. Anderson and Allison Reilly describe mapping isolation areas along both coasts of the U.S. and used the maps to calculate how many people would be impacted. Logan and Reilly have also published an associated Research Briefing in the same journal issue outlining their work. To conduct their calculations, the team first created a map using OpenStreetMap to depict those coastal areas at risk of isolation. They then compared their maps with sea level impacts projected by NOAA. Then finally, they tracked all such neighborhoods and compared them with nearby essential facilities such as schools, hospitals and grocery stores.
