Southeast Florida has experienced significant coastal population growth in recent decades. This region encompasses ecologically sensitive and economically important areas, such as Biscayne Bay, urbanized corridors, tributary watersheds bordering the Bay, and the surface and groundwater systems in regional watersheds. Due to the high property values, dense population, and vulnerable low-lying areas, the region is highly susceptible to flood damage and other environmental stresses.South Florida Coastal Environmental Data and Modeling Center aims at promoting integrated research and education efforts to develop artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for understanding and predicting the key processes affecting ocean, urban, agricultural, and natural systems, and for studying coastal environmental issues important to South Florida, such as sea-level rise, urban flooding, water quality monitoring, and harmful algae bloom detection. The research thrusts of the Center includes foundational research in trustworthy AI with the goal of improving model performance, accuracy, and reliability, and applied research to study coastal environmental problems.The Center collaborates with the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography (AI2ES), and involves researchers from four institutions, including Florida International University (FIU), University of Oklahoma (OU), Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi (TAMUCC), and North Carolina State University (NCSU).The Center focuses on four areas. Firstly, the Center manages and makes curated datasets AI-ready and publicly available for testing AI/ML techniques and developing solutions. Secondly, the researchers collaborate on trustworthy AI for understanding and predicting coastal environmental phenomena, including developing physics-informed AI models, reliable AI systems, and explainable AI methods. Thirdly, the researchers apply AI/ML to study South Florida coastal environmental problems, such as sea-level variability, compound coastal flooding, and harmful algae blooms. Lastly, FIU and AI2ES provide education, training, and workforce development opportunities for diverse undergraduate and graduate students at FIU in AI/ML and Environmental Science, including developing an undergraduate interdisciplinary program, strengthening pathway programs for students from 2-year colleges, sharing education materials, and facilitating research exchange and building alliances among institutions via site visits, internship opportunities, and cross-institution workshops and seminars.
 


This project is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-2331908.