About

Lake Michigan bluffs are a unique natural resource, yet ongoing coastal erosion threatens to change the bluffs and surrounding parkland in ways that could cause safety hazards, loss of habitat, and impacts to recreation, public access, and man-made structures.

The Milwaukee County Parks Lake Michigan Bluffs landscape‑led assessment combined field investigations, GIS analysis, and interdisciplinary collaboration to study 13 parks along 12 miles of shoreline and identify physical vulnerabilities, ecological opportunities, and strategies to mitigate erosion. Together this project demonstrates the breadth of work that landscape architects and geodesigners do, and our critical role in planning for resilience. 

What Silvernail did

Working with Resolution Studio, LLC, we created a sophisticated web experience to communicate the complex analysis and support resilient shoreline planning. Silvernail designed the overall vision for, created, and configured the web experience template including overall navigation, storymaps, a slope profile tool, scenario comparison maps, and project prioritization dashboard.

With this collaborative tool Milwaukee County Parks and its consultants were able to assess erosion risks along Lake Michigan bluffs at the 13 waterfront parks, prioritize mitigation strategies and develop solutions to protect parkland. As a living platform, the County and stakeholders are using this multi-page web experience to interactively and independently prioritize projects for informed decision-making.

Client

Resolution Studio with GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. for contract with Milwaukee County Parks.

Tools Used

ArcGIS Experience Builder

ArcGIS StoryMaps and StoryMap Collection

ArcGIS Dashboards

See how the Prioritization Selector app developed for this project is used for decision support.