Coastal Flooding & Storm Surge Analysis in GIS

 What is Coastal Flooding? 

Why use GIS to determine damage to infrastructure?

By using GIS and Remote sensing Applications, we can determine how much damage a specific area received in regards to natural disasters. 

An example would be hurricanes, tornados, and even tsunamis. For this exercise, a coastal flooding analysis was calculated to show the before area and the aftermath of the Hurricane Sandy storm that plowed through New Jersey. 

We were able to calculate using elevation data taken from LIDAR to determine changes in elevation. In the map below, the areas depicted in red are where massive elevation changes have occurred such as erosion or destruction after the storm. The areas in dark blue indicate sand accretion or building debris. 

Insurance companies can use maps like these to determine how many claims they will be processing after a major hurricane. We can also determine the level of damage, and what areas were affected the most. 

Lidar DEM - Collected from LAS Point Cloud Data

USGS DEM - Collected by the U.S. G. S. Survey for elevation and terrain modeling

Storm Surge In Florida

This map bellows demonstrates using two different elevation models (DEM's from LIDAR and USGS) to determine a prediction of how many buildings might be affected in a certain area due to storm surge. Storm surge is similar to coastal flooding in which the sea level rises due to an incoming storm, such as a hurricane or tsunami, and the sea level will reach a certain height above the ground floor. The map indicates the differences in using a 1 meter storm surge to see how many buildings will be affected in Naples, Florida along the coast. As you can see, the USGS DEM has a higher number of buildings being affected than the LIDAR DEM. 

In future testing, some hurricanes can reach up to 12 meters in a storm surge for storms that equate to a level 5 category hurricane.

 It would be a great idea to test multiple storm surge levels such as 3 meters, 8 meters, or even anything over 10 to see how much infrastructure can be affected by the storm. 

This helps policy makers plan for natural disasters such as hurricanes along the coast. 

Check out this neat video!

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