Leveraging NOAA Data and the Pathfinder Initiative for Flood Resiliency Planning and Evacuation in Coastal Communities: Translating Complex Data into Usable Products

In recent decades, the United States has witnessed a rise in the frequency and severity of weather
and climate disasters, causing significant damages and economic losses, especially in coastal
regions. The increased vulnerability of communities to hurricanes and extreme storm events
necessitates translating NOAA data and observations into the development of innovative
technologies to address the challenges of flood resiliency planning and evacuation. This work
presents a cutting-edge Resiliency as Service (RAS) technology, incorporating data from NOAA,
advanced computational tools, and predictive models, to significantly enhance flood resiliency
and optimize evacuation strategies in coastal environments. Utilizing computationally fluid finite
element models and data-based predictive tools, the technology evaluates building vulnerability
and resiliency under various categories of hurricanes, capturing both aleatory and epistemic
uncertainties in hazard, performance, and resiliency metrics. The precise assessment of flood
damage and structural resiliency is of the utmost importance for coastal communities, mitigating
risk from repeated extreme storm events. However, most flood resiliency studies have been
criticized for lack of accuracy and failing to depict the relationships among the hydrodynamics,
structural characteristics, and community preparedness.

This work presents an inclusive approach to quantifying community-scale flood damage and structural resiliency. Large-scale
coastal flooding has been simulated and validated with semi-coupled storm surge and 2D
inundation models. The depth and momentum components of flood flow were integrated with a
newly developed multidimensional flood-damage assessment model. This assessment model
includes the traditional depth–damage relationship as well as building height, age, configuration,
and construction material to calculate the resiliency of structures as a function of recovery time,
community preparedness, and level of flood-induced damage. The technology has substantial
commercial potential, with adoption prospects spanning individual property owners, insurance
companies, real estate businesses, local municipalities, and regional decision-makers.