Lindsey Sim

18 months of innovative data visualization to inform local, regional, and state public health departments.

SFEI’s Software Engineering Manager Gemma Shusterman led the development of a new data dashboard, designed to track the spread of COVID-19 in our region. With funding from the Catena Foundation, SFEI’s Environmental Informatics program supported the groundbreaking scientific genetic sequencing data produced by our close partner, the University of California’s Berkeley Water Center. Together, SFEI and the Berkeley Water Center matched science with technology to produce actionable, timely information in support of smart public health decisions.

Hidden Nature SF seeks to uncover the natural history of San Francisco’s past landscape. At the heart of the project is the field of historical ecology, which uses interdisciplinary science and visualization techniques to synthesize historical archival data into a completely new perspective on the familiar city. Drawing on hundreds of old maps, photographs, and textual documents, we are reconstructing and mapping the ecosystems and waterways that existed in San Francisco prior to Spanish colonization.

SFEI has completed development of Phase II of our GreenPlan-IT application -- a toolset to empower municipalities to plan, assess, track, and report their green infrastructure investments. This helps restore the water cycle and improve filtration of water quality contaminants. In the latest round of implementation work, we collaborated with the cities of Richmond, Oakland, Sunnyvale, and the county of Contra Costa to meet their green infrastructure planning and reporting needs, while also providing needed enhancements to the toolset in response to user feedback.

EcoAtlas is a set of tools for generating, assembling, storing, visualizing, sharing, and reporting environmental data and information.

SFEI is coordinating the mapping for two inventories of surface waters, wetlands and other aquatic resources in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and along California’s coast. Both efforts will apply the California Aquatic Resource Inventory (CARI) standardized mapping methods and the final map will be integrated into EcoAtlas and made publicly available.

The Coyote Creek Native Ecosystem Enhancement Tool (CCNEET, neet. ecoatlas.org) is an online decision-support tool to identify opportunities to improve ecological conditions. CCNEET was inspired by the need for a watershed approach to environmental resource management. Available ecological and environmental information is synthesized by objectives, management questions, and enhancement actions to identify and justify potential habitat improvements along the creek corridor. The overarching goal of CCNEET is to help coordinate habitat conservation and enhancement along so that multiple projects and limited funding can result in meaningful ecological improvement.

With California's drought rapidly changing the outlook for natural resources, decision-makers must be equipped with information and tools that facilitate clear and rapid decisions. The proposed grant would fund the standardization, visualization, and sharing of Level 3 data. 

As a continuation of our collaboration with BCDC and the Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) team, the technical team at SFEI has developed a new version of the sea-level rise visualization tool which focuses on East Contra Costa and the Delta. The East Contra Costa Shoreline Flood Explorer incorporates regionally specific data that takes into account inundation and flooding information as a product of riverine flooding and sea-level rise.  The map visualizes these data in conjunction with storm events and makes it available to the public, businesses, and policymakers so that they can assess and prepare for potential impacts to communities.

SFEI’s Environmental Informatics team has designed and developed the Bay Area Flood Explorer for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission's (BCDC) Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) program. The project is designed to highlight threats posed by sea level rise. The map displays sea-level-rise data created by AECOM, which was developed with support from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area Toll Authority, and the greenhouse gas reduction funds.

A new synthesis report characterizing the amount, distribution, and diversity of streams and wetlands within the County employing CARI, and an ambient survey of the overall ecological condition of streams employing CRAM.

The Adapting to Rising Tides program of the SF Bay Conservation & Development Commission (ART BCDC), Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) and the San Francisco Estuary Institute / Aquatic Science Center (SFEI) are unveiling the East Contra Costa Shoreline Flood Explorer. SFEI developed the new explorer as a complementary tool to the Bay Shoreline Flood Explorer to allow government organizations and communities in East Contra Costa County to access interactive online maps of local flood risks due to rising sea levels and storm events. These tools help to both highlight what our region could look like without intervention, and to encourage local and regional adaptive plans to minimize flood risks.

The San Francisco Estuary Institute is working to provide support for the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) though Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Graphics, and Technological Services.

Fish and shellfish are nutritious and good for you to eat. But some fish and shellfish may take in toxic chemicals from the water they live in and the food they eat. Some of these chemicals build up in the fish and shellfish - and in the humans that eat fish and shellfish - over time. Although the chemical levels are usually low, it is a good idea to learn about advisories and monitoring in water bodies where you fish, and for fish or shellfish you eat.

More and more groups rely on Project Tracker to assist with their reporting. Why? Because Project Tracker standardizes project data across programs so it is easier to summarize information for reporting purposes. Especially in the Bay Area, it is the most comprehensive regional dataset for project information.

Over the past year, SFEI has been working with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission's (BCDC) Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) program to develop their new Bay Shoreline Flood Explorer. SFEI’s Environmental Informatics team has designed and developed this public-facing and relevant web tool to highlight threats posed by sea level rise. The tool’s sea-level-rise data was created by AECOM, supported by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Area Toll Authority, and funded with support from greenhouse gas reduction funds.

Municipalities across the state and beyond are carefully planning and implementing green infrastructure in their developed landscape to restore key aspects of the natural water cycle. Green infrastructure helps to achieve stormwater attenuation and contaminant filtration by increasing the pervious surfaces in often sophisticated ways.

New data layers and Landscape Profile mode have been added to EcoAtlas (ecoatlas.org), an online tool for visualizing the abundance, diversity, and condition of wetlands, along with the project activities that are affecting the landscape. Enhancements include:

This project will create an EcoAtlas user community for the Lahontan region of the Sierra Nevada to develop capacities within the region to apply EcoAtlas through existing local, regional, state, and federal programs to track projects and summarize map-based and rapid assessment information at the watershed scale.

The Lahontan Water Board (Regional Water Board 6) has formally adopted EcoAtlas and the California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM). This will enable the Water Board to visually track and assess the extent of project impacts on a watershed basis throughout the region.

Beginning August 1 of this year, 401 Certifications and Waste Discharge Requirements will require applicants to upload project information into EcoAtlas. Applicants will be encouraged to use CRAM in pre- and post- project assessments.

A journal article published in April details the findings of a collaborative survey of contaminants in fish on the California coast conducted by the RMP, the California Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program, and the Southern California Bight Program in 2009-2010. The paper used that strong dataset as a foundation for a broad review of mercury in fish on the coast of western North America.  This work was done as part of a series of articles summarizing mercury science for western North America in a special issue of Science of the Total Environment.