This paper describes the operational implementation of the hydrodynamic, finite element ADCIRC model (Luettich et al 1992) for predicting the hurricane storm surge. The first step is retrieving the National Hurricane Center's (NHC) tropical marine advisory forecast through a "Family of Services" data provider. The next step "parses" the predicted 48-h storm position, intensity, and radius of maximum winds using a perl script from the NHC advisory. Since these forecasts are in 12-h increments, an Akima spline routine interpolates to 1-h increments. This information is used to generate 1-h "snapshots" of the tropical cyclone wind field using a Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) hurricane model developed by Cardone (1992).
Finally, the PBL wind fields are nested with the ADCIRC model to forecast the spatial distribution of the storm surge. ADCIRC, which has been vectorized for maximum efficiency, is run on the University of Mississippi Cray supercomputer. Due to the finite element structure of the grid, high resolution of the coastal bathymetry and coastline is captured, resulting in detailed storm surge forecasts. The forecasts for the 1998 hurricane season will be presented at the conference.
The ADCIRC model has also been validated against observed water level observations for many hurricanes in the past two decades. These observations were obtained from the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanographic Data Center, and other sources. Since storm surge observations are not archived in a systematic fashion, this may be the most complete storm surge data set to date. The validation of the ADCIRC model against this storm surge data set will also be presented at the conference.
A brief discussion on efforts to improve ADCIRC's topography using GIS data will also be presented.