KIM COBB

Georgia Power Chair, ADVANCE Professor in the College of Sciences, and Director of the Global Change Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology 

Keynote Speaker in the Our Changing Global Environment Symposia's Water Track

Smart Sea Level Sensors for Coastal Resilience in Savannah, Georgia
Kim M. Cobb, Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Tech
Russell Clark, Research Faculty, Computer Science, Georgia Tech
Randall Mathews, Chatham County Emergency Management Agency
Nick Deffley, Director, Office of Sustainability, City of Savannah
Emanuele Di Lorenzo, Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Tech
Akhil Chavan, Research Assistant, Georgia Tech
Lalith Polepeddi, Research Scientist, Georgia Tech
Tim Cone, Program Director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Math, and Engineering (CEISMC), GT-Savannah
Jayma Koval, Research Faculty, CEISMC, Georgia Tech

Coastal flooding represents a growing threat to the City of Savannah and adjoining areas in Chatham County, which are home to diverse communities rich with cultural heritage and thriving economies. Recent brushes with Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017 saw storm surges of 4+ feet at the county’s only two tide gauges, shutting down county schools and businesses for days. During these extreme weather events, strong winds interacted with an extremely intricate network of coastal rivers, tributaries, and marshlands to create a complex pattern of flooding that varied by up to 3ft over a distance of several miles. The “Smart Sea Level Sensor Project” has installed a network of 43 low-cost, internet-enabled water level sensors to date across flood-vulnerable Chatham County, via a working partnership between officials from the Chatham Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) and the City of Savannah, together with a diverse team of scientists and engineers from Georgia Tech. The sensors relay data back to 12 gateway devices via LoraWAN technology over ranges of 1-5 miles. The sensor network spans a wide range of tributary sizes, orientation, and building densities, and data are currently provided via an API, and n public data portal is under development. The sensor data are complemented by a high-resolution coastal ocean model that integrates weather forecasts to produce 3-day forecasts of coastal flooding at 10m resolution. Targeted curriculum development in middle school Earth Science classes as well as high school Engineering classes help area students engage with the data in the context of coastal flooding and ongoing sea level rise. Taken together, the framework enables the assessment of short- and long-term coastal flooding risk and vulnerability that are required to inform planning for flood mitigation strategies in Chatham County and other coastal communities across the southeastern US.

Biography
Kim Cobb’s research uses corals and cave stalagmites to probe the mechanisms of past, present, and future climate change. She received her B.A. from Yale University in 1996, and her PhD in Oceanography from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in 2002. She spent two years at Caltech in the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2004. 

Cobb has sailed on multiple oceanographic cruises to the deep tropics and led caving expeditions to the rainforests of Borneo in support of her research. Kim has received numerous awards for her research, most notably a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2007, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2008. She sits on the international CLIVAR Pacific Panel, serves on the Advisory Council for the AAAS Leshner Institute for Public Engagement, and is one of the lead authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. As a mother to four, Kim is a strong advocate for women in science. She is also devoted to the clear and frequent communication of climate change to the public through speaking engagements and social media.