The Hawaiian Islands are fortunate that only rarely are they significantly affected by tropical cyclones; however, several hurricanes have caused widespread devastation in the relatively brief period of recorded history in the Islands. In 1992 Hurricane Iniki struck the island of Kauai causing approximately $3 billion in damage. Along the southern coast of Kauai, storm inundation of up to 9 meters was recorded, resulting in many homes and businesses being completely destroyed. Post-storm analysis showed that wave runnup was the primary factor driving total storm inundation, with the storm surge component of total inundation being less than 2 meters. Steep nearshore slopes and complex reef structures render existing storm surge prediction schemes such as the SLOSH model ineffective in Hawaii. A hurricane similar to Iniki could inundate a large area of the city of Honolulu, including all of Waikiki which over 100,000 tourists enjoy every day. Much of the city lies below 10 feet above sea level.

Over the past year, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) in Honolulu has actively been building the capacity to forecast storm inundation potential. With experts in storm inundation and mesoscale modeling at the University of Hawaii's Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering and the Meteorology Department, and disaster response officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, CPHC has proposed a joint effort to model storm inundation risk for the vulnerable southern shore of Oahu.

The proposed project includes modeling storm surge and waves in nested Hawaii and Oahu domains using ECOM and WW3/SWAN. This will provide maximum storm-water levels and wave heights in the Honolulu domain for 12 hypothetical hurricane events. Modeling storm wave inundation using a high resolution BOUSS2D model in the Honolulu domain for the maximum storm-water level and wave height will provide inundation limits of the 12 hypothetical hurricane events. Deliverables will include high resolution evacuation and risk assessment decision aids depicting potential storm inundation.