Development of a Continental Scale Coastal Flood Model Using a
Sub-Setting Approach
Abstract
Coastal flooding associated with hurricanes and other major storm events
along the U.S. Coast results from complex interactions between
freshwater flows, tides, storm surge, and wave effects. We have
developed a two-way coupled model consisting of the National Water Model
(NWM), the Advanced Circulation Ocean Model (ADCIRC), and WAVEWATCH III
(WWIII) to quantify these interactions and compute total water levels in
the coastal zone after significant riverine and coastal flooding events.
This coupled continental coastal model covers the US Gulf and Atlantic
Coasts, extending from the US-Canada border to the US-Mexico border. The
Delft3D FM, D-Flow Flexible Mesh (D-Flow FM) model simulates coastal
flooding on a 2D unstructured mesh within the National Water Model
(NWM)/ADCIRC/WWIII coupled system. We developed a high quality 2D
unstructured mesh using a sizing function that assigns element sizes
based on proximities of coastal features at given spatial locations.
Data sources used to identify relevant coastal features included NWM
streamlines, the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), and United States
Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) data, allowing integration of D-Flow FM
with the NWM and optimization of the number of computational points. The
system obtains freshwater inflow boundary conditions to D-Flow FM from
the NWM channel network. Offshore water levels boundary conditions for
D-Flow FM come from the coupled ADCIRC-WWIII model. Domain sub-setting
keeps runtimes within reasonable limits, as it does execution of the
detailed hydrodynamic model within a user-defined area enclosing the
storm landfall site. The advantage of this approach comes from the fact
that the same coupled model setup allows simulation of coastal flooding
for different storm events; only the sub-setting enclosure and the
atmospheric forcing require updating from case to case. Model
validation, consisting of water level comparisons against observations
from simulations using the coupled system for historical storm events.
The model simulations satisfactorily reproduced observed spatial and
temporal variations of total water levels. In conclusion, this study
presents performance of the sub-setting approach in reducing runtime
considerably without compromising the accuracy of the coupled modeling
system solution.