Capstone Project: Directions and Requirements (Old)

Capstone Project: Directions and Requirements (Old)

This course looks at the processes that shape the coastal zone, produce coastal hazards, mitigate those hazards through engineering, impact coastal societies and economies, and influence public policy and planning to reduce vulnerabilities and risks. The capstone project is an opportunity for you to assemble and integrate this wide array of processes – and to apply modern Earth Science principles of systems thinking – into a single project.

Coastal Vulnerability Audit (CVA)

Your finished product will be 2 presentation-quality PowerPoints created using the provided templates. These will encapsulate the key concepts learned in the course relative to one coastal city. You will gather and record details about your city and submit these details as assignments when prompted at certain stages in the course.

In order to assess your understanding of the diverse multi-disciplinary components of this course, from the perspective of geoscience, coastal engineering, risk assessment, public policy, and environmental planning, we are asking you to complete a Coastal Vulnerability Audit (CVA) for a coastal city chosen from the list provided. Your CVA should demonstrate your ability to apply key topics from every section and module of the course.

In order to complete the audit, you will use the Coastal Vulnerability Audit Tool (CVAT) worksheets that serve as an outline to help aid you as you develop your capstone throughout the duration of the course. As you will see, each section of the CVAT is organized hierarchically to follow the content of the course. Each week, you should make notes on the worksheets and make progress on the Capstone rather than waiting until the end of the semester to do all of it.

Complete and submit the worksheets as indicated in the table below and course calendar and then use those notes to compile information in the CVAT PowerPoint found in the Capstone materials in this module. Finally, at the end of Module 13), complete the CVAT PowerPoint and the additional PowerPoint with maps, relevant illustrations, graphs, and other data compiled in assessments. Follow Stages 1-5 to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Completed Project

The completed project should comprise:

1. Your completed CVAT PowerPoint compiling the most important points about the various aspects of your coastal city, drawn from your notes (do not just copy and paste all your notes; please make corrections based on feedback).
2. An additional PowerPoint presentation containing 8 - 12 slides, following minimal guidelines of:
   • A title slide.
   • A slide including one or more maps, annotated using text and symbols in PowerPoint, conveying the most important points about the city.
   • At least eight (8) Figures (photos, graphics, graphs of data) that help the viewer understand the details about your chosen city. Include captions for all figures. Figures can include graphs or other kinds of data as well as photos. Remember to use data resources that you have used during the course.
   • Summary pages (2) with bullet points summarizing the most important take-away messages you want to get across about your city.
   • One (1) page outlining your Recommended Resiliency Actions for your city.
   • A narration for each slide – spending no more than 30 seconds per slide to highlight the main takeaway points for that slide.
3. An OPTIONAL (for extra credit) 3-minute Google Earth tour (KMZ file) of your city highlighting the most important features of a coastal city exposed to the coastal hazards we have discussed in the course. An audible narration of the tour must be included. Summer 2019 students can earn extra credit if they submit a Google Earth Tour.

Project Deliverables (Stages)

Below is the complete list of tasks and deliverables you'll complete this semester related to the Capstone Project.

The capstone is due at the end of the course. More detail on each stage is available throughout the course.