The Wind Downscaling Modeling Framework for Coastal Wind and Water Damage Applications

The Consumer Option for an Alternative System to Allocate Losses (COASTAL) Act project requires a wind analysis to estimate the strength and timing of damaging winds at a given, “parcel-scale” over-land location in the area impacted by a tropical cyclone and to drive surge and wave models for estimating the water damage. For this study “parcel scale” is assumed to be resolved by using model grid spacing of 10-30m. We have developed a modeling framework that uses WRF-ARW core to conduct high-resolution simulations in LES mode, this modeling framework uses HWRF forcing as initial and lateral boundary conditions, surface URMA/RTMA wind analyses, and ADCIRC hourly water inundation data. In addition, very fine 30-meter-resolution landuse data along with 10-meter resolution terrain data are used to capture fine details of coastal features and water inundation characteristics.

The purpose of the project is to understand wind versus water damages near tropical cyclone landfall locations where damage and inundation impacts are significant. The most challenging requirement for this work is that the model results must achieve 90% accuracy. The wind downscaling is designed to produce 15-minutes time interval averaged surface wind speed, wind gust, wind direction time series at any given location where maximum damages done over residential structures. Along with time series, we will also provide 2D high-resolution surface wind speed and direction at different landfall time. The case studies will be performed with Hurricane Ike (2008) and Hurricane Sandy (2012), and testing 90% accuracy based on their outcome and that can be very useful for wide range of coastal applications.