Regional-scale and local damage surveys of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic coast were performed after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. A satellite-based analysis of over 15,000 houses within one block of the New Jersey, Long Island, and Staten Island coastlines showed a strong correlation between destruction and poststorm dune heights. A detailed survey in Ocean County, New Jersey, classified 380 homes into seven damage states to different subassemblies. A phase-resolving Boussinesq-Green-Naghdi wave model simulating the strongest hour of the storm was used to evaluate hydrodynamics at each residence. Maximum computed water surface elevations were found to differ strongly from standard depth-limited assumptions. A vulnerability model to diagnose the damage state of a coastal residence subject to storm conditions identified maximum water velocity and relative shielding as critical predictors of damage. Improved hydrodynamic models that can efficiently compute the complex flow interactions with structures may provide more reliable damage prediction in coastal communities. (C) 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.

This paper investigates model response sensitivities to mesh resolution, topographical details, bottom friction formulations, the interaction of wind waves and circulation, and nonlinear advection on tidal and hurricane surge and wave processes at the basin, shelf, wetland, and coastal channel scales within the Gulf of Mexico. Tides in the Gulf of Mexico are modestly energetic processes, whereas hurricane surge and waves are highly energetic. The unstructured‐mesh, coupled wind‐wave and circulation modeling system, SWAN+ADCIRC, is implemented to generate modeled tidal harmonic constituents and hurricane waves and surge for a Hurricane Ike (2008) hindcast. In the open ocean, mesh resolution requirements are less stringent in achieving accurate tidal signals or matching hurricane surge and wave responses; however, coarser resolution or the absence of intertidal zones decreases accuracy along protected nearshore and inland coastal areas due to improper conveyance and/or lateral attenuation. Bottom friction formulations are shown to have little impact on tidal signal accuracy, but hurricane surge is much more sensitive, especially in shelf waters, where development of a strong shore‐parallel current is essential to the development of Ike's geostrophic setup. The spatial and temporal contributions of wave radiation stress gradients and nonlinear advection were charted for Ike. Nonlinear advection improves model performance by capturing an additional 10–20 cm of geostrophic setup and increasing resonant cross‐shelf waves by 30–40 cm. Wave radiation stress gradients improve performance at coastal stations by adding an extra 20–40 cm to water levels.

Hurricane Ike (2008) made landfall near Galveston, Texas, as a moderate intensity storm. Its large wind field in conjunction with the Louisiana-Texas coastline's broad shelf and large scale concave geometry generated waves and surge that impacted over 1000 km of coastline. Ike's complex and varied wave and surge response physics included: the capture of surge by the protruding Mississippi River Delta; the strong influence of wave radiation stress gradients on the Delta adjacent to the shelf break; the development of strong wind driven shore-parallel currents and the associated geostrophic setup; the forced early rise of water in coastal bays and lakes facilitating inland surge penetration; the propagation of a free wave along the southern Texas shelf; shore-normal peak wind-driven surge; and resonant and reflected long waves across a wide continental shelf. Preexisting and rapidly deployed instrumentation provided the most comprehensive hurricane response data of any previous hurricane. More than 94 wave parameter time histories, 523 water level time histories, and 206 high water marks were collected throughout the Gulf in deep water, along the nearshore, and up to 65 km inland. Ike's highly varied physics were simulated using SWAN?+?ADCIRC, a tightly coupled wave and circulation model, on SL18TX33, a new unstructured mesh of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and western Atlantic Ocean with high resolution of the Gulf's coastal floodplain from Alabama to the Texas-Mexico border. A comprehensive validation was made of the model's ability to capture the varied physics in the system.

AbstractOver the past decade, numerous field campaigns and laboratory experiments have examined air–sea momentum exchange in the deep ocean. These studies have changed the understanding of drag coefficient behavior in hurricane force winds, with a general consensus that a limiting value is reached. Near the shore, wave conditions are markedly different than in deep water because of wave shoaling and breaking processes, but only very limited data exist to assess drag coefficient behavior. Yet, knowledge of the wind stress in this region is critical for storm surge forecasting, evaluating the low-level wind field across the coastal transition zone, and informing the wind load standard along the hurricane-prone coastline. During Hurricane Ike (2008), a Texas Tech University StickNet platform obtained wind measurements in marine exposure with a fetch across the Houston ship channel. These data were used to estimate drag coefficient dependence on wind speed. Wave conditions in the ship channel and surge level ...

AbstractA probabilistic framework is presented for evaluation of hurricane wave and surge risk with particular emphasis on real-time automated estimation for hurricanes approaching landfall. This framework has two fundamental components. The first is the development of a surrogate model for the rapid evaluation of hurricane waves, water levels, and run-up based on a small number of parameters describing each hurricane: hurricane landfall location and heading, central pressure, forward speed, and radius of maximum winds. This surrogate model is developed using a response surface methodology fed by information from hundreds of precomputed, high-resolution Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) + Advanced Circulation Model for Oceanic, Coastal and Estuarine Waters (ADCIRC) and One-Dimensional Boussinesq Model (BOUSS-1D) runs. For a specific set of hurricane parameters (i.e., a specific landfalling hurricane), the surrogate model is able to evaluate the maximum wave height, water level, and run-up during the storm...

The lack of a continental shelf in steep volcanic islands leads to significant changes in tropical cyclone inundation potential, with wave setup and runup increasing in importance and wind driven surge decreasing when compared to more gently-sloped mainland regions. This is illustrated through high resolution modeling of waves, surge, and runup on the Hawaiian Islands of Oahu and Kauai. A series of hurricane waves and water levels were computed using the SWAN + ADCIRC models for a suite of 643 synthetic storm scenarios, while local wave runup was evaluated along a series of 1D transects using the phase-resolving model Bouss1D. Waves are found to be an extremely important component of the inundation, both from breaking wave forced increases in storm surge and also from wave runup over the relatively steep topography. This is clear in comparisons with debris lines left by Hurricane Iniki on the Island of Kauai, where runup penetration is much greater than still water inundation in most instances. The difference between steeply-sloping and gently-sloping topographies was demonstrated by recomputing Iniki with the same landfall location as Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Surge was greatly increased for the mild-slope Iniki-in-Louisiana case, while pure wind surge for Iniki-in-Kauai was very small.For the entire suite of storms, maxima on Kauai show predicted inundation largely confined to a narrow coastal strip, with few locations showing more than a few hundred meters of flooding from the shoreline. As expected, maximum flooded areas for the 643 storms were somewhat greater than the Iniki inundation.Oahu has significantly more low-lying land compared to Kauai, and consequently hypothetical tropical cyclone landfalls show much more widespread inundation. Under direct impact scenarios, there is the potential for much of Honolulu and most of Waikiki to be inundated, with both still water surge and wave runup contributing. Other regions of Oahu show inundation confined to a more narrow coastal strip, although there is still much infrastructure at risk.Even for very strong storms in Oahu and Kauai, maximum still water surge is relatively small, and does not exceed 3 m in any storm modeled. In contrast, hurricane waves several kilometers from shore regularly exceed 10 m due to the lack of a continental shelf. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Hurricane Gustav (2008) made landfall in southern Louisiana on 1 September 2008 with its eye never closer than 75 km to New Orleans, but its waves and storm surge threatened to flood the city. Easterly tropical-storm-strength winds impacted the region east of the Mississippi River for 12-15 h, allowing for early surge to develop up to 3.5 m there and enter the river and the city's navigation canals. During landfall, winds shifted from easterly to southerly, resulting in late surge development and propagation over more than 70 km of marshes on the river's west bank, over more than 40 km of Caernarvon marsh on the east bank, and into Lake Pontchartrain to the north. Wind waves with estimated significant heights of 15 m developed in the deep Gulf of Mexico but were reduced in size once they reached the continental shelf. The barrier islands further dissipated the waves, and locally generated seas existed behind these effective breaking zones.The hardening and innovative deployment of gauges since Hurricane Katrina (2005) resulted in a wealth of measured data for Gustav. A total of 39 wind wave time histories, 362 water level time histories, and 82 high water marks were available to describe the event. Computational models-including a structured-mesh deepwater wave model (WAM) and a nearshore steady-state wave (STWAVE) model, as well as an unstructured-mesh "simulating waves nearshore'' (SWAN) wave model and an advanced circulation (ADCIRC) model-resolve the region with unprecedented levels of detail, with an unstructured mesh spacing of 100-200 m in the wave-breaking zones and 20-50 m in the small-scale channels. Data-assimilated winds were applied using NOAA's Hurricane Research Division Wind Analysis System (H*Wind) and Interactive Objective Kinematic Analysis (IOKA) procedures. Wave and surge computations from these models are validated comprehensively at the measurement locations ranging from the deep Gulf of Mexico and along the coast to the rivers and floodplains of southern Louisiana and are described and quantified within the context of the evolution of the storm.

An efficient, computational framework is discussed for hurricane risk estimation with emphasis on online applications. Basis of this framework is the characterization of each hurricane scenario through five model parameters: the location and angle of landfall, the central pressure, the forward speed, and the radius of maximum winds. Description of the uncertainty in these parameters, through appropriate probability models, leads then to quantification of hurricane risk as a stochastic integral. For efficiently evaluating this integral, application of response surface methodologies as a surrogate modeling approach is discussed. An illustrative example is presented that considers applications of these tools for hurricane risk estimation for the Oahu Island in Hawaii.

A large, unpredicted, water level increase appeared along a substantial section of the western Louisiana and northern Texas (LATEX) coasts 12–24 hrs in advance of the landfall of Hurricane Ike (2008), with water levels in some areas reaching 3 m above mean sea level. During this time the cyclonic wind field was largely shore parallel throughout the region. A similar early water level rise was reported for both the 1900 and the 1915 Galveston Hurricanes. The Ike forerunner anomaly occurred over a much larger area and prior to the primary coastal surge which was driven by onshore directed winds to the right of the storm track. We diagnose the forerunner surge as being generated by Ekman setup on the wide and shallow LATEX shelf. The longer forerunner time scale additionally served to increase water levels significantly in narrow‐entranced coastal bays. The forerunner surge generated a freely propagating continental shelf wave with greater than 1.4 m peak elevation that travelled coherently along the coast to Southern Texas, and was 300 km in advance of the storm track at the time of landfall. This was, at some locations, the largest water level increase seen throughout the storm, and appears to be the largest freely‐propagating shelf wave ever reported. Ekman setup‐driven forerunners will be most significant on wide, shallow shelves subject to large wind fields, and need to be considered for planning and forecasting in these cases.

An efficient, computational framework is developed for evaluation of hurricane risk for coastal regions with particular emphasis on online risk estimation. Basis of this framework is the characterization of each hurricane scenario through five model parameters: the location and angle of landfall, the central pressure, the forward speed, and the radius of maximum winds. Description of the uncertainty in these parameters, through appropriate probability models, leads then to quantification of hurricane risk as a probabilistic integral. One of the greater advances in this field has been the development and adoption of high fidelity numerical simulation models for reliable and accurate prediction of hurricane impact for a specific event. This approach significantly increases, though, the computational cost for estimating risk since this estimation requires evaluation of the surge response for a large number of hurricane scenarios, representing the entire space for possible hazard uncertainties. For efficiently performing this task an approach based on response surface methodologies is discussed in this paper: using information from a small amount of pre-computed high-fidelity numerical simulation, response surfaces are built as a surrogate model for efficiently predicting surge responses and these surfaces are then used for efficient risk assessment. An illustrative example is presented that considers applications of these tools for hurricane risk estimation for the Oahu Island in Hawaii.