Caribbean nations are on the front lines of climate change, facing rising seas, increasingly powerful storms, coastal erosion and flooding. Yet many have historically lacked the high-resolution elevation and coastal data needed to understand how their landscapes are changing and make informed decisions about climate adaptation.
A groundbreaking regional initiative led by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), in partnership with NV5, is helping change that. Through a multi-year program, NV5 is acquiring and processing high-resolution topographic and topobathymetric lidar and imagery across participating Caribbean nations. The result is a consistent, comparable baseline that governments can use to better understand both land elevation and shallow coastal waters and how those environments change over time.
The scale and collaborative approach make the program particularly significant. By coordinating regional surveys, participating countries can share costs while gaining access to consistent data that would be difficult for many nations to acquire independently. NV5 processes the lidar and imagery to provide an integrated view of each country’s geography, supporting applications ranging from storm surge and evacuation planning to infrastructure design, coastal erosion monitoring, and natural resource management.
That data is already translating into action. Antigua and Barbuda is using it to support vegetation mapping, watershed and drainage analysis, and updated national elevation models. In Barbados, repeat lidar surveys have helped coastal managers evaluate storm-driven sediment movement, monitor vulnerable coral reefs, and identify cliff failures along remote coastlines. The broader program is also building local geospatial capacity through training, data sharing and new analysis workflows so countries can continue turning the data into decisions long after each survey is complete.
In the September/October 2026 xyHt Magazine cover article, CCCCC’s Dr. Mark Bynoe and NV5 Geospatial Program Manager, Sven Cowan, explore how this coordinated approach is creating a new model for climate resilience, one that combines consistent data, shared expertise and long-term capacity to help vulnerable nations better understand and prepare for change. Read the full article to see how geospatial data is helping transform climate resilience across the Caribbean.