Climate Change Resources

As the city moves forward with its many projects and initiatives, communicating with the public is essential. Properly defining a project is vital to the success of the project – how it will work, the value it will provide, who will benefit, how we will know if we’re successful.

100 - Year Flood: A flood event that has a one percent chance of being equaled or exceeded during any given year. It can also be termed the "one percent "flood since this relates the event to an annual time period instead of a 100 year time period.

Adaptation: The ability to adjust to different or changing conditions

Backflow Preventer - Backflow preventers are devices installed in a stormwater system to prevent water from flowing backward in the system. Backflow preventers are commonly used to prevent flooding from elevated tides.

Base Flood Elevation (BFE): The computed elevation to which floodwater is anticipated to rise during the base flood. Base Flood Elevations (BFEs) are shown on Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) and on the flood profiles

Best Management Practices (BMP) - Solutions for the protection of natural resources. Development projects require BMPs in order to comply with established water quantity and quality regulations. BMPs can be structural and non-structural solutions that provide multiple benefit opportunities for protecting and improving water quality while reducing flooding.

Coastal Erosion: The wearing away of land and the removal of beach or dune sediments by tidal currents, wave action or high winds.

Green House Gases: Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and help to maintain the Earth’s surface at a temperature that is comfortable for human life

Impervious area - The areas of the City covered by constructed surfaces, such as buildings, houses, roadways, sidewalks, parking lots, driveways and paved areas, which does not allow water to absorb into the soil. Impervious area is used in the calculation of stormwater flow over these paved areas.

King tide: The king tide is the highest predicted high tide of the year at a coastal location, produced by the orbits and alignments of the Earth, Moon and Sun

Level of Service (LOS) - For Miami Beach, level of service for the stormwater system is defined as the level of flooding kept below homes and buildings that also allow roads to remain passable for emergency traffic, as practicable, for the SFWMD defined 5-year 24-hour design storm.

Mean High Water (MHW) - A tidal datum. The average of all the high water heights observed over the National Tidal Epoch.

Mitigation: The efforts to reduce or eliminate the effects of a changing environment.

NAVD 88: The North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) is the vertical control datum established in 1991 used to define elevations. This control datum is used by FEMA to map elevations of flood hazard zones.

NGVD: NGVD 29 stands for National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929. It is a system that has been used by surveyors and engineers for most of the 20th Century. It has been the basis for relating ground and flood elevations, but it has been replaced by NAVD.

Outfall: Historic and permitted discharge location from the stormwater system to surface waters such as Biscayne Bay or any of the internal waterways of the City of Miami Beach. There are over 300 public and private outfalls throughout the City of Miami Beach.

Recharge Well: Wells that are designed to discharge treated stormwater into subsurface aquifers and can be used for disposing of excess stormwater, dewatering purposes, and to prevent salt water intrusion into the fresh water aquifers.

Resiliency: The capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow, no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience.

Salt Water Intrusion: The movement of saline water into freshwater aquifers

Seawall: A wall or embankment erected to prevent the sea from encroaching on an area of land.

Shocks: Shocks are typically considered single event disasters, such as fires, earthquakes, and floods

Storm Surge: A rising of the sea as a result of atmospheric pressure changes and wind associated with a storm

Stormwater utility - a special entity set up to provide funding that is used specifically for stormwater management. It is a dedicated service unit within the City government which provides revenues through fees for service (or user fees).

Stresses: Stresses are factors that pressure a city on a daily or reoccurring basis, such as chronic food and water shortages, an overtaxed transportation system, endemic violence or high unemployment

Sustainability: Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.

Tidal Boundary Condition: the elevation of the tides at the outfall of the City’s stormwater management system. In most instances in Miami Beach, the boundary condition is the tidal elevation of Biscayne Bay (or interior canals and waterways) where the City’s stormwater outfalls discharge their flow.

Tidal Epoch: the specific 19-year period adopted by the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) as the official time segment over which tide observations are taken and reduced to obtain mean values for tidal datums.

Tides: a generic term used to define the alternating rise and fall of the oceans with respect to the land, produced by the gravitational attraction of the moon and sun.