Coastal Storm Modeling System

SAVES $100S OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN REGIONAL CONSTRUCTION COSTS

Most existing coastal storm modeling systems focus on developing effective empirical tuning methods for optimizing calibration. This works well for operational systems but does not address critical needs for advancing modeling technology. A robust, high-fidelity, and standardized approach to accurately establish the risk of coastal communities to future occurrences of storm events is needed to inform effective and efficient flood risk reduction. Corps researchers have produced the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CSTORM-MS), a comprehensive system of highly skilled and highly resolved models to simulate coastal storms and accurately assess risk to coastal communities. With physics-based modeling, CSTORM-MS integrates a suite of highfidelity storm modeling tools to support a wide range of coastal engineering needs. The driving processes are tropical and extra-tropical storms; wind, wave and water levels; and coastal response, including erosion, breaching and accretion. The system has been applied by the Corps’ North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study, the Coastal Texas Comprehensive Study, the Alabama Coast Comprehensive Study and the South Atlantic Coast Study, as well as by the state of Louisiana for its entire coastal area.

PROBLEM: Coastal areas are vulnerable to devastating storm surge and waves, with national implications increasing as coastal populations and infrastructure increase. The threat is exacerbated by sea level rise and potential changes in the frequency and severity of hurricane hazards. This includes compound flooding events of surge, rainfall and fluvial flooding. Corps coastal engineers and navigation managers need accurate estimates of storm surge and waves to assess storm damage risk to coastal communities and coastal infrastructure.

SOLUTION: CSTORM-MS provides a robust, accurate, and standardized approach to characterize storm hazards that put coastal communities at risk. The state-of-theart system assesses the coastal storm hazard with an efficient workflow that is easy to configure and execute. It allows for multi-scale numerical scenarios for reducing the uncertainty of storm impacts to existing structures and for the design of new flood-risk reduction projects, including natural and nature-based features.

IMPACT: CSTORM-MS has been used for numerous regional coastal studies. In addition to being applied by the Corps, the system is being applied by FEMA for flood risk mapping and by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency for assessing coastal flood risk at its power plants. Timely and accurate flood risk quantifications save millions of dollars in new construction costs, such as by lowering uncertainties for structure heights. CSTORM-MS is also used to populate the Coastal Hazard Systems database.