NOAA's Vision for a Coordinated Storm Surge Enterprise

Realizing that a coordinated multidisciplinary approach to storm surge modeling, forecasting, and product generation is key to success, NOAA as recently assembled a team of scientists from across its programs to lay out a 10 year storm surge roadmap as a strategic plan for transitioning new developments to operations. To date, the storm surge roadmap represents the most comprehensive effort to coordinate activities across the entire NOAA storm surge enterprise. The roadmap consists of 3 overarching goals: providing total water level (i.e., surge + tides + waves + freshwater flow), creating inundation products depicting the depth of water over land, and communicating information in an actionable way. The guiding philosophy of the roadmap team is to improve partnerships and build a community approach. Presently, an implementation plan for Phase 1 (FY10-FY11) is under development that lays out how NOAA's storm surge activities will be coordinated under a common, sustainable agency strategy to infuse the best science into operations. Additionally, to assist with federal interagency coordination, an ad-hoc working group on coastal inundation has been formed by the Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction (an element of the President's National Science and Technology Council). The working group is a team of experts from across government working on an implementation plan to carry out the SDR's strategies for making our coastal communities safer from inundation and storm surge.