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HAZUS Coastal Surge
Model Development Oversight Begins
A new Coastal Surge Model Oversight Committee established
by the Institute will assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in
evaluating the development of a fully functional coastal storm surge module for
use with the HAZUS-MH loss estimation tool. The Committee consists of:
Kishor Mehta, Texas Tech
(Chairman)
Mark Crowell, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Andrew Kennedy, University of Notre Dame
Ed Laatsch, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Joseph Minor, University of Missouri-Rolla
Spencer Rodgers, North Carolina Sea Grant
Jamie Rhome, National Hurricane Center
The Committee is charged with assessing:
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An update of existing approaches to HAZUS methods for
coastal hurricane storm surge hazard characterization, particularly the use
of SLOSH (Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes), and
The development of a
functional module for estimating the damage and losses from combined
hurricane wind and flood coastal events to reflect engineering/scientific
community state-of-the-art knowledge and understanding.
Key to the success of this model development effort will be
the ability to properly account for and allocate damages from coastal surge
attributable to wind and flood independently while avoiding double counting of
damages. Until now, no public models were available to allocate the flood/wind
induced damage associated with hurricanes. Previous models either addressed
flood losses only or wind losses only. Consequently adding the losses arising
from the two models almost always overestimated the true total losses of an
event.
The team that will develop the HAZUS Coastal Surge Model
consists of PBS&J, Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA), and ABS Consulting
(ABS), the HAZUS-MH software developers and subject matter experts that
originally produced and have maintained the hurricane and flood modules and
supporting databases. The team has already completed research and analysis for
integrating and leveraging the SLOSH model in HAZUS-MH.
A teleconference and web presentation held November 19,
updated the Committee on coastal surge model development progress.
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