A missing link in predicting hurricane damage
By Donatella Pasqualini
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The reason for this problem is that existing storm-impact models are missing a critical piece of data: eroding coastlines. The Delaware estuary loses a full acre of coastline each day, which significantly impacts how quickly and where water will rise. But incorporating data about coastlines into models is extremely difficult because the variables that cause erosion are interrelated: the type of soil along a coastline and its salinity influence what kind of vegetation will grow there, which, in turn, impacts how rising flood waters will move—which impacts erosion, which impacts the soil and salinity, and so on. This interdependence makes the problems nonlinear. And nonlinear problems are very difficult to solve computationally.
Using supercomputers at Los Alamos, we’ve developed a model that processes data about the physical characteristics of coastlines—including soil, vegetation and sensitivity to erosion—and how those characteristics would interact with a hurricane and its storm surge.
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Because it’s based on physics and not a single geographical area, the model can be applied on a regional scale and include any coastal city.
Eroding coastlines are only one piece of the puzzle. To get the full picture, we integrate this model with several others—for ocean, vegetation, land and electrical power—along with simulations—to show how extreme weather propagates through the networks—to create a physics-based, fully automated framework that can be employed the next time a hurricane is barreling toward a coast.
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