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Coastal Storms Program
Southern CaliforniaBathymetric/Topographic Digital Elevation ModelAs part of the Coastal Storms Program, NOAA is developing a vertical datum transformation tool that will enable seamless integration of bathymetric and topographic data. This tool, called VDatum, is being developed nationally through regional applications such as this project for Southern California. Vertical elevation data may be entered into VDatum and converted among approximately 30 different tidal, orthometric, and ellipsoidal datums. This allows data, which may be referenced to different vertical datums, to be combined seamlessly through appropriate transformations. A digital elevation model (DEM) uses VDatum to combine available topographic and bathymetric data in Southern California into a gridded product across the land-sea interface. How the Project Will WorkThe vertical datum software application for Southern California is being provided to federal, state, county, and local coastal resource and emergency planners for use in their coastal applications. Since the software is becoming publicly available, this information will also greatly improve available shoreline information for geographic information system users and modelers in the region. The properly merged bathymetric and topographic DEM will be vital to a number of applications—including the evaluation of the impacts of coastal storms related to erosion and accretion, as well as modeling studies of inundation associated with storm surge and tsunamis. The tide models developed for computing tidal datum fields in the vertical datum transformation tool can be extended to experiment with storm surge simulations in the Southern California Bight. For Additional Information Edward Myers |
