Coastal Emergency Risks Assessment
Storm Surge Guidance for Emergency Management and Real-Time Decisions
Thank you to the State of Louisiana and the LSU Center for Computation & Technology for making significant contributions to support storm surge modelling and real-time operations.
We are proud to be named as one of LSU’s most in-demand tools to protect coastal communities from flooding. 🌀
See LSU’s article here
Since 2000, a significant amount of tropical storms have made landfall on the Atlantic Coast and the Northern Gulf of Mexico.
Our newly launched website historicalstorms.coastalrisk.live includes more than 50 tropical storms that involved injury or loss of life, incurred damages to property, and made significant economic impact.
The comprehensive CERA Storm Surge Archive archive provides water height, wind, and wave data based on the ‘Best Tracks’ from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the ADCIRC storm surge model. Each storm can be explored in detail with CERA’s visualization tool using the Best Tracks – Historical U.S. Storms data model option.
Hurricane IAN was a destructive category 4 hurricane that caused severe damage across the states of Florida and South Carolina.
The CERA Group delivered ongoing forecast results to 90,000 users over the entire course of the storm. The ADCIRC Surge Guidance System Team, the LSU Center for Computation and Technology (CCT) and High Performance Centers in TX and LA were key partners for our success to provide uninterrupted storm surge modeling and visualization guidance.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center published a Q&A, covering the role of the Coastal Emergency Risks Assessment (CERA) Storm Surge and Flood Web Mapping Visualization Tool and its importance during hurricane IAN.
Did you know that about 85 tropical storms form annually over the warm tropical oceans of the globe? And while the majority of tropical cyclones happen in the northern hemisphere with most activity occurring between mid-August and mid-October, tropical cyclones in the southern hemisphere are most frequent during the December through April warm season.
The Coastal Emergency Risks Assessment (CERA) web storm surge guidance system provides water levels and wind information from NOAA’s Global Extratropical Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (G-ESTOFS) for storm surge and wind guidance around the year. One of our latest features is the overlay of global hurricane and typhoon track information coming from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC).
In January 2022, the NOAA Coast Survey Development Lab (CSDL) was awarded funding to improve storm surge modeling to further enhance NOAA’s disaster preparedness and response. The Louisiana State University (LSU) Coastal Emergency Risks Assessment (CERA) web mapping application is an integral part of this collaborative project to deliver storm surge and inland flooding model results to the public and the modeling community.
The award was published in the February edition of NOAA’s Coast Survey Newsletter:
We are delighted to introduce our latest CERA enhancement that provides 558 global water level points from the NOAA Extratropical Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (ESTOFS) system on a daily basis.
About ESTOFS:
The NOAA/NOS/Coast Survey Development Lab and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) produce storm surge guidance for extratropical systems through their Extratropical Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (ESTOFS) four times daily out to 7.5 days. The ESTOFS model uses the storm surge model ADCIRC forced by real time output of atmospheric pressure, winds, and sea ice from the NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) and is run on NOAA’s WCOSS super computing system to produce numerical outputs. The global unstructured grid consists of 8 million nodes with a coastal grid resolution of up to 80 m for Hawaii and the US West Coast, and up to 120 m for the US East Coast, Puerto Rico, Micronesia, and Alaska.
The Coastal Emergency Risks Assessment (CERA) visualization tool provides ESTOFS results on its interactive visualization website (https://cera.coastalrisk.live) once daily, including global water level heights and wind speed results. The newly added ESTOFS water level stations combine predicted forecast water levels from the model with observed water levels from the NOAA Tide & Currents service and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) Sea Level Station Monitoring Facility.
In addition to this new feature, we made major updates to all water level stations along the US coast, including services from NOAA, USGS, and the USACE.
Ida (August 26 – 31, 2021) made landfall as a strong category 4 hurricane near Port Fourchon, LA on August 29. The impacts of Ida are far-reaching across Southeastern Louisiana and beyond. Over a million customers in the region were without power, and for some, restoration is estimated to take weeks or longer. The greater New Orleans area was left completely in the dark, leaving officials scrambling to determine the best path to bring the city and surrounding areas back up. The devastation caused in the coastal areas like Grand Isle, where 100% of structures are reported to have sustained damage, will take years to rebuild. Intense flooding in the River Parishes left homes and businesses destroyed.
The CERA Group at the LSU Center for Computation and Technology successfully performed storm surge and flood guidance to end users in Louisiana. Several model results were available on the CERA website at https://cera.coastalrisk.live.
Success Highlights
On July 27, 2021, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations upgraded the Global Extratropical Surge & Tide Operational Forecast System (Global ESTOFS) to version 2. This upgrade contains major improvements in model performance, resolution, and coverage to provide high resolution water level forecast guidance including storm tide for the entire globe.
The CERA visualization system makes this upgrade available through it’s online portal at cera.coastalrisk.live.
FEMA’s Hazus Program provides standardized tools and data for estimating risk from earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and hurricanes.
We have recently learned that the FEMA Hazus Development Group uses our CERA storm surge guidance visualization system to validate the development of a data tool for integrating hazard data into the FEMA Hazus application.
Thank you FEMA for the trust in the quality of the provided data through the CERA site at https://cera.coastalrisk.live
The fifth named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season formed over the Atlantic early Thursday (July 1).
According to the National Hurricane Center, Tropical Storm Elsa tracks westward at a quick pace of 25 mph.
Together with our partners at Seahorse Coastal Consulting , LSU High Performance Center, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center , the CERA Group has started storm surge guidance using the storm surge model ADCIRC.
You can follow real-time updates on the CERA website at https://cera.coastalrisk.live
