Living Breakwaters is an innovative coastal green infrastructure project designed to reduce and eventually reverse erosion and damage from storm waves; improve the ecosystem health of the Raritan Bay; encourage stewardship of our nearshore waters; and enhance people’s experience of the shoreline of Southern Staten Island. The project was initially developed by SCAPE for the Rebuild by Design (RBD) Competition, a design competition held by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to seek cutting-edge ideas for climate and social resilience in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. The project is being implemented by the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery (GOSR).

About the Speaker:

Pippa Brashear, RLA, is the Resilience Principal at Scape and the Project Manager of the Living Breakwaters project. A leading national expert on resilience planning and design for climate adaptation, Pippa works with multi-disciplinary teams to develop landscape strategies and next-century infrastructure that integrate environmental, economic and social benefits. She leads both planning and built work teams within the firm, bringing an ecological and people-driven approach to SCAPE’s projects—informed by systems thinking; an understanding of natural and nature-based systems; engineering methods; and social and environmental equity.