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Climate change and coastal stormwater/infrastructure management
Citation:
Yang, J. AND C. Nabbie. Climate change and coastal stormwater/infrastructure management. ACE Connect, Cincinnati, OH, May 17, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
This is a Moment of Science seminar in the ACE Connect meeting. In response to the ACE partners' request, the presentation is to show the StRAP3 and ongoing ACE research results on coastal vulnerability assessment and adaptation engineering against storm surges and other extreme events.
Description:
Storm surges and coastal flooding cause large-scale damage to communities and the environments of the Atlantic and Gulf coast. For the stochastic hurricane tracks and landing, the ACOE’s costal hazards maps and NOAA NWS’ National Storm Risk Maps provide simulated storm surge and inundation largely based on historical events. These products can be used for large-scale coastal risk assessment. It is noted, however, that climate change in future emission scenarios can produce sea level rise and the changes to hurricane formation, forwarding and landing locations. Recent investigations all indicate a significant increase of the coastal storm surge and hydrological impacts in the future. How to factor the climate extremes in the coastal hydrological analysis is a challenge to managing the coastal risk to water programs and infrastructure resilience. The ACE research team has developed a two-pronged approach to manage the uncertainties in storm surge projection for stormwater and other infrastructure adaptation and emergency response. In this seminar, Jeff Yang (ORD/CESER/WID) and Caroline Nabbie (R2/WD/SRFT) will illustrate the approach with applications based on the StRAP3 AE 6.3.1, StRAP4 ACE408.5.3, and the FY22 R2P2 research. First is to overview the hurricane occurrence in the ocean climate systems and describe the uncertainty sources in projecting storm surge and coastal inundation. Then the two-pronged approach is introduced for regional coastal risk assessment and for local adaptation of the stormwater and infrastructure systems. Examples are provided using case studies along the Atlantic coast.