Description:

Coupled Coastal Flood Modeling for the Consumer Option for an Alternative System To Allocate Losses (COASTAL) Act:

The Consumer Option for an Alternative System To Allocate Losses (COASTAL) Act, which was included in the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2012, was enacted to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) determine the extent to which wind vs. water was the cause of damage in cases where little tangible evidence exists beyond a building’s foundation following a tropical cyclone (also known as "indeterminate losses" or "slabs"). This determination is needed for the proper and timely adjustment of insurance claims, as water damage is covered by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, while wind damage is covered by private insurers. The COASTAL Act requires the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to produce detailed post-storm assessments following certain tropical cyclones impacting the U.S. and its territories. The assessments will be produced using a Named Storm Event Model (NSEM), which will indicate the strength and timing of damaging winds and water at a given location within the impacted area. NOAA is required to make post-storm assessment results and observations from the storm available to the public via the Coastal Wind and Water Event Database (CWWED).

This special session will showcase the various modeling activities that NOAA and her academic partners have undertaken to meet the requirements of the COASTAL Act. These include: (a) coupled surge-wave-river modeling for compound flooding using ADCIRC, SLOSH, WAVEWATCH III and WRF-Hydro/National Water Model, (b) efficiency and scalability improvements to WAVEWATCH III, (c) high-fidelity hurricane modeling using HWRF and RTMA/URMA, (d) DEM development and high-resolution unstructured mesh development, (e) statistical methods for accuracy assessment, and (f) the development of the Coastal Wind and Water Event Database (CWWED) for data visualization and dissemination.

Collection and Application of Novel Observations in the Coastal Environment:

The coastal environment is a dynamic regime wherein interactions occur between oceans, land, ice, and air. Understanding the complex conditions requires a wide range of observations of weather, land, streams, lakes, and oceans on a dense temporal and spatial scale. Observation technologies are being developed to collect this data both in-situ and remotely, including advanced sensor and autonomous systems. These data are becoming part of networks being used to address critical coastal problems. Submissions are sought which document technology advancements and systems which improve the capability and/or capacity to conduct observations of meteorological and oceanographic phenomena in the coastal zone.