Director’s Message

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Director’s Message and Mission

Hurricanes and Nor’Easter storms affect the East and Gulf coasts of the US each year and can cause billions of dollars in damage. The ability to predict storm track and forcing conditions has improved but still has ample uncertainty. There are also known and unknown “unknowns” with regard to the effect of these events on community infrastructure, people, and natural resources.

The coastal science and engineer community has identified some research gaps and initiated the US Coastal Research Program (USCRP) to bring together researchers, funding agencies, stakeholders and policy makers with the goal of identifying national science plans. The USCRP has held several workshops, including the Storm Processes and Impacts Workshop in April 2018. The National Science Foundation also recognizes the importance of the coast to the nation’s prosperity and has initiated the Coastlines and People (CoPe) scoping sessions. The sessions are meant to bring together researchers from physical science and engineering with those in biological, social, behavioral, and economic sciences, education and human resources to identify research priorities related to advancing understanding of the impacts of coastal environmental variability and natural hazards on populated coastal regions. As academic researchers, we hope that a national priority in coastal processes will enhance research opportunities and funding.

Tian-Jian Hsu (Tom)
Director, Center for Applied Coastal Research

Welcome to the Center for Applied Coastal Research at the University of Delaware. Please browse our web page to learn more about our graduate programs, opportunities for undergraduate research and the center mission.

CACR Mission
We will create and distribute coastal processes knowledge to enhance the welfare of residents near coastlines along Delaware, the United States and beyond.

CACR Values
We will be a collegial Center that embraces change and innovation as we strive towards excellence. We welcome diversity in people, ideas and engineering/scientific approaches.

Our mission and vision will be achieved through the following goals:

1) To remain as one of the pre-eminent coastal engineering graduate programs in the United States and produce leaders in industry, government and research positions for regional/global coastal problems.
2) To train top-level graduate students to become future professors/mentors in coastal engineering.
3) To welcome diversity among faculty and students.