CERA - An Interactive ADCIRC Storm Surge and Wave Visualization Framework

One of the key components of running a successful model like ADCIRC is the delivery of the forecasting results to the end-user in a fast, effective, user-friendly, and visually appealing way. The interactive website CERA (http://coastalemergency.org ) has been designed to be an intuitive-to-understand tool for the scientific community, emergency managers, and decision makers. The CERA website is the user-facing endpoint of a fully automated, stable, reliable, and robust workflow implementing an effective post-processing system which generates the data visualization directly from ADCIRC.

We propose to show the existing CERA technology with examples from several storm runs (Katrina 2005, Irene 2011, Isaac 2012). We will demonstrate the importance of accurate input data like the bathymetry and elevation from the ADCIRC meshes and the improvements that had been made over the past years. We give examples what additional information proved to be useful for emergency managers during active storms. We will also explain how the Advanced Surge Guidance System (ASGS) can be effectively used in operational mode to provide forecasting results in real-time.