About the Project

The Gulf of Mexico region has been the site of many devastating hurricanes and coastal storms. Coastal processes, such as erosion and sea-level rise and increased coastal development, are increasing the vulnerability of Gulf of Mexico coastal communities to these storms. Thus, the region is an ideal location for a demonstration project aimed at integrating NOAA's data collection and modeling activities for enhanced storm surge predictions.

The Storm Surge Partnership Project will assess the needs of coastal communities for storm evacuations and planning. The project team will then design a demonstration project for the Pensacola, Florida area that best meets community needs.

The Florida Gulf coast, near Pensacola, Florida, was selected because of well-documented past hurricane events involving storm surge and flooding, including Hurricane Opal in 1995 as well as the recent landfall of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Another reason for selecting Pensacola was the availability of sufficient data, such as high-resolution data for inundation mapping and oceanographic and meteorological data, for use in the models.

The project is one of two Gulf of Mexico projects funded by the NOS Partnership Program to support the U.S. Ocean Action Plan Gulf of Mexico Alliance and to clearly illustrate the scientific and socioeconomic value of ocean observations in integrated ocean management.

Project Goal | Project Objectives | Project End-Products | The Value of Integration

Goal

Working with multiple partners, this project will work to help Gulf of Mexico coastal communities mitigate damages from coastal storm surge and flooding impacts, to reduce loss of life, property damage, and ecosystem destruction.

Objectives

To better understand how storm surge products are being used and how to improve these products, the Storm Surge Partnership Project will work to:

• Determine the needs of the coastal management community. The project team will determine how coastal managers currently use storm surge forecasts and inundation maps and what additional information or improvements would increase the utility of these tools. After identifying coastal management needs, the project team will bring together representatives from the scientific community to determine technical and scientific strategies for, and gaps in, meeting those needs.
• Acquire and integrate needed coastal and ocean observation data. Based on data and information gaps identified during the workshops, the project team will work with the larger Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) community to gather and merge observation data such as water levels, storm high water marks, wind speeds and directions, river discharges, and satellite products.
• Improve inundation maps using new data-collection technologies. Researchers will assemble, collect, and integrate geospatial data, including coastal elevation and sea level data, to produce enhanced base maps for the study area. Improved base maps will provide important information needed to determine coastal areas susceptible to flooding. The vertical datum transformation tool VDatum will be developed for the study region, enabling adjustment of all elevation data to a common reference datum and construction of continuous bathy/topo elevation fields.
• Test a prototype storm surge model. Using newly acquired and assembled data in conjunction with recent developments in coastal models and in response to user needs, project partners will develop a prototype storm surge model for the greater Pensacola region. Model results will be evaluated as to the model's capability to provide improved predictions. The project will also identify areas of future storm surge model development and direction.
• Develop innovative management products. Based on the results of the prototype storm surge model, a series of innovative products will be distributed to coastal officials and decision-makers to evaluate which products most closely and effectively meet their needs. These needs include the ability of coastal communities to mitigate storm impacts, thus reducing loss of life, property damage, and ecosystem destruction.

End-Products

The Project will integrate information and data in order to improve the following products:

• topographic, bathymetric, gravimetric and geodetic data
• vertical datum transformation tool, including an improved geodetic model of the Gulf of Mexico region
• storm surge forecasting and warning systems
• decision-support tools used for evacuation strategies
• planning and risk and vulnerability assessment methodologies
• improved capabilities for working with digital elevation, water level, and geodetic data
• sea-level rise modeling
• and information systems designed for response and restoration activities

By the end of the project (fiscal year 2008), the project team will make many of these products available to the coastal community. Additional details on products that may be developed during the project, please visit the Products page.

The Value of an Integrated Approach

The Storm Surge Partnership Project team will work with federal, state, and local resource management partners and coastal communities to better coordinate and integrate new and existing programs for gathering, analyzing, distributing, and applying ocean observation data and information. This integration effort is intended to increase the efficiency and utility of data acquisitions, reduce potential for duplicative efforts, and apply standard methodologies to ensure the greatest applicability of the data and final products. This approach involves close collaboration among NOAA's considerable resources and expertise available to monitor and predict storm surge inundation and coastal flooding.

The project team will identify the data requirements, compiled the available NOAA data, and evaluated the utility of data resources from other federal and state agencies to ensure modeling efforts are based upon and validated against the best-available data. They also worked together to define a geographic scope for the bathymetric and topographic data collection effort that would meet the needs of as many aspects of the project as possible. To ensure that the approach was consistent with local needs, the project team met with members of the coastal and emergency management communities to identify priority needs and preferred outputs for such a project.

Analyzing the socioeconomic impacts of information and tools developed during the project will help to demonstrate the value of applying integrated ocean observations high resolution computational models to management issues and to build support for such an approach. For example, enhancements to storm surge models may allow emergency managers to decrease the size of their evacuation zones during hurricanes, potentially saving coastal communities millions of dollars from unnecessary evacuations.

This project will also strengthen existing and build new partnerships between federal, state, and local officials, fostering long-term collaboration. Lessons learned throughout the project will assist future data sharing and integration. Lastly, the products and services from this project will be exported to other coastal communities in the U.S. and abroad.

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