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Hydrology Engineers at UW Aid in Predictions of Hurricane Irene!
August 29, 2011 —
Last Thursday, August 25, a
request came from the commander of U.S. Army Corps in charge of coastal
defenses in the northeast region to the Engineering Research and
Development Center (ERDC) of the Corps to forecast inland flooding
effect. ERDC has been using the Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic
Analysis (GSSHA) for several years in studies of the effect of storm
surge and sea-level change on coastal military facilities and cities.
The GSSHA model has been used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to
predict the inland effects of predicted storm surge from hurricane
Irene on New York City and Long Island. GSSHA model development has
been lead by Professor Fred Ogden of the Department of Civil and
Architectural Engineering and his students in conjunction with ERDC.
GSSHA simulations were driven by storm surge forecasts, and simulated
the flow of sea-water over New York City and Long Island. Model
outputs included maps of maximum flooded depth. These output maps
were animated using GoogleEarth and shown to the leadership of New York
City including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who used this information to
evacuate coastal and low-lying areas and plan for the coming disaster.
The GSSHA modeling work was done by Dr. Nawa Pradhan, who worked at the
University of Wyoming with Professor Ogden as a post-doctoral associate
from 2006-2010, and Mr. Aaron Byrd, both of whom work in the Coastal
and Hydraulics lab of ERDC in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Advisory 25 final results (pdf)
