Coastal Hazard Assessments and Forecasts from Hurricane Florence
Hurricanes Florence and Michael caused extensive damage to coastal communities in North and South Carolina when they made landfall in September and October of 2018, respectively.
Hurricane/coastal assessment and risk: tasks and benefits 2019
Erosion and widespread flooding due to the coupling of heavy rainfall and strong storm surge increased immediate and long-term hazards to shorelines, including densely populated areas, putting critical infrastructure at risk of future storm impacts and causing economic losses. The 2019 Disaster Supplemental Appropriation enabled the USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program to: (1) temporarily increase staff working on new rapid-response mapping techniques; (2) develop tools that more accurately forecast the intensity, location, and impacts of extreme events by accounting for compound impacts; and (3) map future coastal flooding and erosion hazards to guide infrastructure planning. This work will aid post-storm repair and recovery efforts in North and South Carolina by improving hurricane impact models for coastlines and updating assessments and models of coastal vulnerability to future storms.
To help stakeholders, such as the U.S. National Park Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), rapidly assess storm impacts, plan field operations, and evaluate risks to natural resources, USGS developed new workflows (Over et al., 2021a) and techniques to evaluate and significantly improve the ability to use aerial imagery to measure coastal change along U.S. shorelines (e.g., Outer Banks and North Core Banks, North Carolina; Ritchie et al., 2021). Techniques for storing and processing imagery entirely in the cloud and on USGS High Performance Computing resources allow before and after comparisons of hurricane impacts to be available to stakeholders within hours after a storm to help facilitate response activities, as demonstrated immediately following Hurricanes Isaias and Laura. New imagery of North Core Banks has provided an unprecedented view of the effects of sound-side flooding and erosion, resulting in new concepts for the response to and recovery from major coastal events (Over et al., 2021b).
Federal agencies, emergency management offices, and local coastal planners rely on accurate storm forecasts to help make decisions that will safeguard lives and property along the coast. Many existing forecast models only account for singular weather phenomena. To more accurately forecast the impacts of hurricanes and storms, USGS developed tools that combine sophisticated models to provide more realistic scenarios. New techniques to predict the compound impacts (i.e., increased flooding) of ocean surge and riverine rainfall flows (Yin et al., 2021) are provided to NOAA NWS to enhance coastal flood forecasting of the NOAA National Water Model. USGS has also developed techniques to better model hurricane intensity and rainfall distribution (Porchetta, et al., 2020; Zambon, et al., 2021) and understand accompanying impacts of meteotsunamis, which can be generated during tropical cyclones and strong frontal systems and can cause severe damage and loss of life (Shi et al., 2020). To provide guidance for future infrastructure planning, USGS is mapping future coastal flooding and erosion hazards that can be expected due to sea-level rise and storms in North Carolina and South Carolina. These assessments include flood extent, depth, duration, and uncertainty for 28 unique sea-level rise and storm scenarios, future erosion hazard zones for 6 future sea-level rise scenarios, and depth to water table for 7 sea-level rise scenarios. Hazard zones will be translated into socioeconomic impacts and reported in the Hazard Exposure Reporting and Analytics (HERA)
Return to 2019 Supplemental Appropriations Activities.
Additional Resources:
Total Water Level and Coastal Change Forecast Viewer
Hurricane Florence Numerical Modeling
Related Content
DUNEX Aerial Imagery of the Outer Banks
Operational Total Water Level and Coastal Change Forecasts
Future coastal hazards along the U.S. North and South Carolina coasts
Aerial photogrammetry data and products of the North Carolina coast
Ocean wave time-series data simulated with a global-scale numerical wave model under the influence of projected CMIP6 wind and sea ice fields
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2020-05-08 to 2020-05-09
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2020-02-08 to 2020-02-09
Coast Train--Labeled imagery for training and evaluation of data-driven models for image segmentation
Topobathymetric Model of the Coastal Carolinas, 1851 to 2020
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-11-26
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-10-11
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-09-08 to 2019-09-13, Post-Hurricane Dorian
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-08-30 and 2019-09-02, Pre-Hurricane Dorian
Storm-Induced Overwash Extent
Tropical or extratropical cyclones: What drives the compound flood hazard, impact, and risk for the United States Southeast Atlantic coast?
Modeled coastal-ocean pathways of land-sourced contaminants in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence
Global projections of storm surges using high-resolution CMIP6 climate models
A model integrating satellite-derived shoreline observations for predicting fine-scale shoreline response to waves and sea-level rise across large coastal regions
Relative contributions of water-level components to extreme water levels along the US Southeast Atlantic Coast from a regional-scale water-level hindcast
Rapid modeling of compound flooding across broad coastal regions and the necessity to include rainfall driven processes: A case study of Hurricane Florence (2018)
A 1.2 billion pixel human-labeled dataset for data-driven classification of coastal environments
Sound-side inundation and seaward erosion of a barrier island during hurricane landfall
Understanding the role of initial soil moisture and precipitation magnitude in flood forecast using a hydrometeorological modelling system
A reproducible and reusable pipeline for segmentation of geoscientific imagery
Human-in-the-Loop segmentation of earth surface imagery
Modeling of barrier breaching during Hurricanes Sandy and Matthew
Hurricane Florence Numerical Modeling
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has partnered with North Carolina State University (NCSU), Louisiana State University (LSU) and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to investigate hurricane-induced compound flooding and sediment dispersal using coupled hydrology and ocean models.
Coastal Change Hazards Portal
Interactive access to coastal change science and data for our Nation’s coasts. Information and products are organized within three coastal change hazard themes: 1) extreme storms, 2) shoreline change, and 3) sea-level rise. Displays probabilities of coastal erosion.
Hazard Exposure Reporting and Analytics (HERA)
The Hazard Exposure and Reporting Analytics (HERA) website helps communities understand how natural hazards could impact their land, people, infrastructure, and livelihoods. HERA provides tools and data to help communities as they plan and prepare for natural hazards.
Related Content
DUNEX Aerial Imagery of the Outer Banks
Operational Total Water Level and Coastal Change Forecasts
Future coastal hazards along the U.S. North and South Carolina coasts
Aerial photogrammetry data and products of the North Carolina coast
Ocean wave time-series data simulated with a global-scale numerical wave model under the influence of projected CMIP6 wind and sea ice fields
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2020-05-08 to 2020-05-09
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2020-02-08 to 2020-02-09
Coast Train--Labeled imagery for training and evaluation of data-driven models for image segmentation
Topobathymetric Model of the Coastal Carolinas, 1851 to 2020
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-11-26
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-10-11
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-09-08 to 2019-09-13, Post-Hurricane Dorian
Aerial Imagery of the North Carolina Coast: 2019-08-30 and 2019-09-02, Pre-Hurricane Dorian
Storm-Induced Overwash Extent
Tropical or extratropical cyclones: What drives the compound flood hazard, impact, and risk for the United States Southeast Atlantic coast?
Modeled coastal-ocean pathways of land-sourced contaminants in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence
Global projections of storm surges using high-resolution CMIP6 climate models
A model integrating satellite-derived shoreline observations for predicting fine-scale shoreline response to waves and sea-level rise across large coastal regions
Relative contributions of water-level components to extreme water levels along the US Southeast Atlantic Coast from a regional-scale water-level hindcast
Rapid modeling of compound flooding across broad coastal regions and the necessity to include rainfall driven processes: A case study of Hurricane Florence (2018)
A 1.2 billion pixel human-labeled dataset for data-driven classification of coastal environments
Sound-side inundation and seaward erosion of a barrier island during hurricane landfall
Understanding the role of initial soil moisture and precipitation magnitude in flood forecast using a hydrometeorological modelling system
A reproducible and reusable pipeline for segmentation of geoscientific imagery
Human-in-the-Loop segmentation of earth surface imagery
Modeling of barrier breaching during Hurricanes Sandy and Matthew
Hurricane Florence Numerical Modeling
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has partnered with North Carolina State University (NCSU), Louisiana State University (LSU) and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to investigate hurricane-induced compound flooding and sediment dispersal using coupled hydrology and ocean models.
Coastal Change Hazards Portal
Interactive access to coastal change science and data for our Nation’s coasts. Information and products are organized within three coastal change hazard themes: 1) extreme storms, 2) shoreline change, and 3) sea-level rise. Displays probabilities of coastal erosion.
Hazard Exposure Reporting and Analytics (HERA)
The Hazard Exposure and Reporting Analytics (HERA) website helps communities understand how natural hazards could impact their land, people, infrastructure, and livelihoods. HERA provides tools and data to help communities as they plan and prepare for natural hazards.