The CEAR Hub Helps Coastal Communities Build Resilience
The work happens more than 200 miles from Tech Square, but its roots run straight through Atlanta. Along coastal Georgia's marshes and waterfronts, Georgia Tech researchers are helping communities read the water, plan for it and push back against it. They call the effort the Coastal Equity and Resilience Hub, or CEAR Hub.
Dr. Jill Gambill leads the hub as its executive director and a senior research associate at Georgia Tech. She came to the role after 13 years at the University of Georgia, where she started in science communications and went on to help write Georgia's first sea level rise adaptation plan for Tybee Island. That work pulled her out of public relations and into something more hands-on. “It moved me beyond the PR side of communications to strategic communications with communities,” she said.
The CEAR Hub launched in 2022, seeded by $5 million in federal funding championed by Sen. Jon Ossoff to help vulnerable coastal Georgia communities confront environmental and climate threats. Gambill moved to Savannah to run it.
Below are a few of the ongoing projects the CEAR Hub is working on.
Sensors that watch the water
CEAR grew out of a straightforward problem: the Georgia coast was flooding, and almost no one was measuring it. For years, a single long-term water level monitor operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Fort Pulaski near Savannah stood as the only one of its kind along the entire coast. After Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017, researchers saw how unevenly the flooding landed and how much its timing varied from town to town.
In 2018, CEAR researchers began deploying low-cost, internet-connected sensors to fill the gaps. The denser network lets officials see exactly when and where water is cresting, from Brunswick on down the coast. The project has since branched into urban flood monitoring, with sensors mounted above streets to track rising water in real time. On the coast, the problem compounds. “We have the same issue you have in the city, where a heavy rain causes stormwater runoff flooding,” Gambill said. “But it’s compounded out here, because you also have tidal flooding at the same time.” The data helps Savannah decide where to prioritize drainage improvements, then track whether they work.
Cleaner air is next. In Greater West Savannah, where industry, traffic and port activity burden residents' health, CEAR works with the nonprofit The Harambee House on a neighborhood air quality monitoring network, guided by a community advisory board.
A sandbox that tells the future
Some of the hub's most striking work looks like play. Colleagues at Georgia Tech's Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) built CEAR a portable sand table, a compact version of the projection sandboxes some museums use. A depth camera reads the shape of the sand, and a projector washes it in color, red for high ground, purple for low. Kids sculpt their own landscapes, and then the researchers pour in real sea level rise data.
“You add the sea level rise to it, and you see, how does your landscape respond?” Gambill said. “Where is it flooding? How is water moving through your landscape?” “They are so into it, they could play with it for hours,” she said of the campers who tried the table at three sites along the coast this summer. “The parents have to drag some of the kids away.”
The team is now adding pieces that let children drop into homes, bridges and, crucially, solutions. Set down a restored marsh, a rebuilt dune, a renourished beach or a house on stilts, and the projection recalculates the water. The goal, Gambill said, is to move past fear. “Communities can feel so paralyzed when faced with coastal climate change, because these problems are often on a global scale,” she said. The table answers that with agency. “We want to give them solutions, and we want them to feel like they can be proactive.”
The sand table was developed in Atlanta by TSRB's Tim Trent and Noah Posner, currently sitting on campus in Tech Square
Letting the community lead
Farther south, in the Chatham County community of Pin Point, CEAR plays a quieter part. Pin Point is a historic Gullah Geechee community, settled by descendants of formerly enslaved people who left the barrier islands after devastating hurricanes in the late 1800s and have held onto their language, cuisine and traditions ever since. Working through the Pin Point Betterment Association, which holds its own funding sub-awards through Georgia Tech, residents set the priorities while CEAR provides support.
Their list keeps growing. Neighbors organized a community-wide tree trimming ahead of hurricane season, started a community garden, launched K-12 education for descendants, tackled stormwater and flooding, and built a shared emergency supply cache for the community. “We're not in a vacuum choosing what we think are solutions,” Gambill said. “The community is actually telling us.”
That partnership now anchors CEAR's most ambitious tool yet. Two new grants, from the IBM Foundation and Georgia Sea Grant and led by Georgia Tech's Alex Robel (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences), fund a model that will let people test adaptation options and see the outcome almost instantly. Where engineers once spent hours on a scenario by hand, the tool now leans on AI to return results in near real time. “You can do that now, but it’s very laborious,” Gambill said of the old way. “This is something where you can do it instantly.” A resident might ask what happens with a living shoreline, the natural alternative to a concrete seawall that in Georgia means bagged oyster shells and marsh grass. “It’s a way of helping to solve the problem, but also protecting the habitat and the ecosystem,” Gambill said, since a hard wall leaves the marsh nowhere to go as the sea climbs.
Looking forward
The CEAR Hub’s throughline runs back to Atlanta. The sensors, the sand table and the models all took shape in labs, and now they help neighbors on the coast meet the water with something better than dread.
Please click here for a list of all the CEAR Hub’s ongoing projects.