DBW-50thAnnBook-PROOF

state’s entire coastline. CDIP displays the wave data and modeling results in color maps and charts on its web site (http://cdip.ucsd. edu). Internet access to this information helps boaters, the maritime industry, scientists, coastal residents, design engineers, and many public agencies, including the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. The CDIP site averages more than 100,000 hits per day and more than twice that number during storms. Cal Boating applies CDIP’s inventory of historical wave information, combined with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), to assess future flooding potential along the California coast. New efforts will help the Ocean Protection Council and California Energy Commission utilize the published range of projections of sea level rise by calculating the likelihood of coincidence of future high water levels with large storm waves. This important work, based on the observed connection between Pacific Ocean storms and wave height, period and approach direction established from the CDIP and NDBC historical record, will help define the magnitude and likely timing of serious flooding and erosion episodes. The Online California Coastal Records Project The Online California Coastal Records Project, one example of the department’s involvement in beach erosion and restoration efforts, has been more than 30 years in the making. When erosion threatens to damage coastal infrastructure, or there is not enough beach width to meet recreational needs, beach erosion control projects can halt erosion, preserve and protect the shoreline, minimize economic losses, and maintain urgently needed recreational beaches. Cal Boating’s Beach Erosion Control and Public Beach Restoration Programs address these issues. In the 1970s, George Armstrong, coastal engineer and then manager of the Beach Erosion Program, had a vision of an aerial photographic record of the entire California coastline. No concerted effort had previously been made to take a statewide picture of California’s beaches, coastal bluffs and coastal development. Cal Boating wanted to document shoreline and beach changes over time. George shot a continuous series of overlapping, oblique aerial photos of the entire coast in 1972 and 1979, using photographic know-how acquired in

Photo shows a Waverider™ buoy, the main data gathering system used by the Coastal Data Information Program. The pitching, rolling and heaving movements of the buoy measure the heights, periods and travel directions of the ocean waves passing underneath. Wave information is transmitted to coastal stations by cell phone from buoys near shore, or by satellite link from offshore or remote locations.

Wave overtopping and subsequent flooding in Mission Beach, San Diego exemplify coastal hazards.

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50 Years: The Department of Boating and Waterways, 1957 to 2007