NEARC Fall 2017

STORMTOOLS a GIS Based System to Provide Web Accessible Flooding Maps for Coastal and Inland Communities.

The vision for STORMTOOLS is to provide access a suite of coastal planning tools (numerical models, etc.), available as a GIS based web service, that allows wide spread accessibly and applicability at high resolution for user selected coastal or inland areas of interest. The first tool (2015) developed under this framework was a flood inundation model that allowed estimates of flooding, with and without sea level rise(SLR), for varying return periods. Inundation estimates can be based on the  US Army Corps of Engineers numerical hydrodynamic/wave model predictions performed as part of the North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study (NACCS) for the area impacted by Hurricane Sandy, including all of the northeast, or other similar flood modelling studies for the area of interest.  To address challenges facing coastal zone managers and municipal planners in the development of an objective, quantitative assessment of the risk to structures, infrastructure, and public safety a Coastal Environmental Risk Index(CERI) was developed next. CERI allows estimates of inundation, wave, and wind damage at a structure by structure level and has been designed as a web accessible Geographic Information System (GIS) based tool. CERI can be applied to both coastal and inland areas. CERI has been applied to several communities representing typical coastal barrier systems directly exposed to ocean waves and high erosion rates, with predominantly low density single family residences and to areas inside a bay with more limited wave exposure, lower erosion rates, and higher residential housing density. STORMTOOLS Design Elevation Maps(SDEs) are currently being generated to support coastal planning and design and explicitly consider SLR. All GIS products developed as part of this initiative have been made available via GIS. One of the additional benefits of SDE maps is that one obtains flooding maps similar to those provided by FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM) but that explicitly consider sea level rise.  In addition 3D visualization of the results have been used to help better communicate the results to the planning community and the public.