Modeling of storm-induced coastal flooding for emergency management

This paper describes a model package that simulates coastal flooding resulting from storm surge and waves generated by tropical cyclones. The package consists of four component models implemented at three levels of nested geographic regions, namely, ocean, coastal, and nearshore. The operation is automated through a preprocessor that prepares the computational grids and input atmospheric conditions and manages the data transfer between components. The third generation spectral wave model WAM and a nonlinear long-wave model calculate respectively the wave conditions and storm surge over the ocean region. The simulation results define the water levels and boundary conditions for the model SWAN to transform the storm waves in coastal regions. The storm surge and local tides define the water level in each nearshore region, where a Boussinesq model uses the wave spectra output from SWAN to simulate the surf-zone processes and runup along the coastline. The package is applied to hindcast the coastal flooding caused by Hurricanes Iwa and Iniki, which hit the Hawaiian Island of Kauai ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-808-956-3485; fax: +1-808-956-3498. E-mail address: [email protected] (K.F. Cheung). 1 Presently at Sea Engineering, Inc., Houston, TX, USA 2 Presently at INTEC Engineering Partnership, Ltd, Houston, TX, USA 3 Presently at Pacific Missile Range Facility, Department of Defense, Kekaha, HI, USA 4 Presently at Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA 0029-8018/03/$ see front matter  2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0029-8018(02)00133-6 1354 K.F. Cheung et al. / Ocean Engineering 30 (2003) 1353–1386 in 1982 and 1992, respectively. The model results indicate good agreement with the stormwater levels and overwash debris lines recorded during and after the events, demonstrating the capability of the model package as a forecast tool for emergency management.  2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.