Focus on Integration

Partner collaboration and the integration of data and resources will play key roles in achieving the Storm Surge Partnership Project objectives. Throughout the project, the project team will be recording integration accomplishments, and lessons learned will likely assist future data sharing and integration.

Partner Collaboration | Data Integration

Partner Collaboration

Achieving project objectives will require collaboration amongst the:

• National Ocean Service (NOS)
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• other federal and state coastal organizations
• academic community

Specific examples of partner collaborations that will occur during the project are described below.

LIDAR Collection

The project team will coordinate with the Joint Airborne LiDAR Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX) to collect airborne topographic and bathymetric Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data for the Pensacola, Florida area. The JALBTCX is a partnership in airborne coastal mapping and charting among the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) and NOAA. Data collected through JALBTCX will allow the project team to utilize high resolution data that continuously describes the land-water interface with high vertical accuracy.

IOOS Coordination

The Storm Surge Project will collaborate with the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) community to identify additional coastal and ocean observations that may be needed. In addition the team will catalog and utilize existing observations and produce an Internet mapping application that will serve these data.

Outreach Activities

The NOAA National Ocean Service Special Projects office (SP) and Coastal Services Center (CSC) will work proactively to coordinate project activities, including outreach and education efforts, with the Coastal Storms Program and the NOAA Storm Surge Team. This collaboration will allow all project team members to work with other NOAA programs to understand what members of the coastal management community need from NOAA in terms of storm surge products. By reducing duplication of effort through integration of effort, input from a greater number of community members can be received than if these NOAA programs worked alone. Thus, this collaboration will benefit NOAA as well as the community that NOAA serves.

Supporting the Gulf of Mexico Regional Partnership

The Storm Surge Partnership Project is one of two partnership projects which are components of NOAA's support for the US Ocean Action Plan Gulf of Mexico Alliance; the other project will advance the monitoring and forecasting of red tide blooms (PDF, 164 KB, Requires Adobe® Reader®) to benefit public health and coastal economies. By employing the collaboration and integration of efforts specifically called for in the Ocean Action Plan, the partnership projects will help federal, state, and local Gulf of Mexico partners address management issues identified by the Gulf States as key priorities.

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Data Integration

The Storm Surge Project is dependent upon the collection and integration of a number of data sets. Additionally, much of the data collected during this project will be shared with project partners and the coastal community at large and thus will benefit other projects and users. Examples of integration with regards to data used during the project are discussed below.

Airborne gravimetric data will be collected for the entire Gulf of Mexico region to support improved coastal geodetic information and vertical datum transformations.

A vertical datum transformation tool (VDatum) will be developed for the Pensacola area to transform data to a common vertical datum. This tool allows for the adjustment of topographic and bathymetric elevation data sets to a uniform datum regardless of the source collection datum. A hydrodynamic model for the greater Pensacola region will be developed to support the VDatum application. Tidal datums computed by the model will be linked with ellipsoidal and orthometric datums, with transformations computed by the National Geodetic Survey based upon the gravimetric dataset. The tidal model will also be used as the basis for future modeling studies of storm surge.

High resolution datasets will be merged with existing best-available elevation data from the region to create seamless models of topography and bathymetry to support multiple NOS programs. This dataset will fulfill the need for updated coastal bathymetry and topography, storm surge forecasts, ecosystem protection and change analysis, post-hurricane damage assessment, updated national shoreline, and models to predict sea level rise. Updated topographic and bathymetric data will be incorporated into the project demonstration storm surge model so that recent changes to coastal areas can be accounted for and coastal communities can accurately determine what coastal areas are most susceptible to flooding.

Observation data such as wind speed and direction and water level will be used to support storm surge modeling efforts. Coastal, estuarine, and inland flooding data will be used to help improve the accuracy of storm surge models. Existing US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) water level networks will be incorporated into the NOAA tidal datums database and USACE data will be ingested by CO-OPS for processing and tidal datum verification.

Meaningful understanding of ecological processes is key to the long-term viability of coastal communities. Ecological models will be combined with the high resolution elevation data and hydrodynamic flooding model to predict the ecological effects of projected sea level rise. The result will demonstrate landscape responses to sea level rise relevant to critical natural resources.

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