Probabilistic storm surge heights for the US using full stochastic events

Storm surge flooding associated with tropical cyclones can cause significant property damage along the gulf and eastern coastlines of the USA. Since 2005 Hurricane Katrina, several studies have been performed to re-evaluate increased storm surge flood risk. These studies are based mainly on a small number of synthetic events. Given current understanding of hurricane physics and limited historical data, our proposed methodology runs the SLOSH storm surge model with tens of thousands of synthetic hurricanes generated by a physics-based stochastic procedure. The statistics of the event set are compared with available historical hurricanes and the result is shown to capture historical hurricane risks. The performance of SLOSH model is evaluated by modeling many historical landfalling hurricanes and comparing model maximum surge elevations with observed high water marks. Preliminary results for 500-year storm surge elevations will be presented and compared with available FEMA maps and other published studies along the US coastline.