Storm Surge Model Development and Applications for Southern Louisiana and Mississippi

Project Sponsors: USACE-LACPR; USACE-MVN; USACE-HPO; FEMA Region VI

Collaborators: Bruce Ebersole, Don Resio, Ty Wamsley, Jane Smith, CHL US Army ERDC; John Atkinson, Hugh Roberts, Arcadis; Hasan Pourtaheri, Jay Ratcliff, USACE-MVN; Clint Dawson, University of Texas at Austin; Randy Kolar, Kendra Dresback, University of Oklahoma

Project Goal: Develop a high resolution coupled atmospheric-wind-wave-tide-riverine flow-storm surge model for Southern Louisiana and Mississippi, validate this model and apply the model within a stochastic framework in order to establish 100 year flood levels in Louisiana and Mississippi and investigate the influence of barrier islands, built barriers, and marshes on surge levels in the region.

Project Documentation:
Flood Insurance Study: Southeastern Parishes, Louisiana, Intermediate Submission 2: Offshore Water Levels and Waves, FEMA, US Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District, July 24, 2008

S. Bunya, J.C. Dietrich, J.J. Westerink, B.A. Ebersole, J.M. Smith,  J.H. Atkinson, R. Jensen, D.T. Resio, R.A. Luettich, C. Dawson, V.J. Cardone, A.T. Cox, M.D. Powell, H.J. Westerink, H.J. Roberts, “A High Resolution Coupled Riverine Flow, Tide, Wind, Wind Wave and Storm Surge Model for Southern Louisiana and Mississippi: Part I - Model Development and Validation,” Monthly Weather Review, In Press, 2009.

S. Bunya, J.C. Dietrich, J.J. Westerink, B.A. Ebersole, J.M. Smith,  J.H. Atkinson, R. Jensen, D.T. Resio, R.A. Luettich, C. Dawson, V.J. Cardone, A.T. Cox, M.D. Powell, H.J. Westerink, H.J. Roberts, “A High Resolution Coupled Riverine Flow, Tide, Wind, Wind Wave and Storm Surge Model for Southern Louisiana and Mississippi: Part II - Synoptic Description and Analyses of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ,” Monthly Weather Review, In Press, 2009.
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Storm Surge Model Development and Applications for Texas

Project Sponsors: USACE-MVN; FEMA Region VI

Collaborators: John Atkinson, Hugh Roberts, Arcadis; Clint Dawson, University of Texas at Austin; Don Resio, CHL US Army ERDC; Chris Bender, Taylor Engineering; Randy Kolar, Kendra Dresback, University of Oklahoma

Project Goal: Develop a high resolution coupled atmospheric-wind-wave-tide-riverine flow-storm surge model for Texas, validate this model and apply the model within a stochastic framework in order to establish 100 year flood levels in coastal Texas.
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CMG Collaborative Research: Adaptive Numerical Methods for Shallow Water Circulation with Applications to Hurricane Storm Surge Modeling

Project Sponsor: National Science Foundation Award No. DMS-0620696

Collaborators: Clint Dawson, University of Texas at Austin; Rick Luettich, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Project Goal: Develop a new generation of algorithms for coastal flow and transport equations that are:
                              - Robust and accurate in solving propagation and advection
                              - Elementally mass conservative
                              - Suited for multi-physics
                              - Suited for meter scale resolutions
                              - Highly parallelizable
                              - h and p adaptive

Project Documentation:
Kubatko, E.J., C. Dawson, J.J. Westerink, “Time Step Restrictions for Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Methods on Triangular Grids,” Journal Computational Physics, 227, 9697-9710, 2008.

Kubatko, E.J., S. Bunya, C. Dawson, J.J. Westerink, “Dynamic p-adaptive Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for the Shallow Water Equations,” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 198, 1766-1774 , 2009.

Bunya, S., E.J. Kubatko, J.J. Westerink, C. Dawson, “A Wetting and Drying Treatment for the Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Solution to the Shallow Water Equations,” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 198, 1548-1562, 2009.
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Wave and Circulation Prediction on Unstructured Grids

Project Sponsor: Office of Naval Research Award No. N00014-06-1-0285

Collaborators: Clint Dawson, University of Texas at Austin; Rick Luettich, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Guus Stelling, Leo Holthuizen, Delft University of Technology

Project Goal: Dynamically couple wind wave models with coastal circulation models
                              - Apply tight two-way coupling on identical unstructured grids
                              - Apply dynamic h-p adaptivity to resolve waves, wave radiation stress
                                gradients and currents as they evolve
                              - Optimize parallel scaling

Project Documentation:
Kubatko, E.J., C. Dawson, J.J. Westerink, “Time Step Restrictions for Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Methods on Triangular Grids,” Journal Computational Physics, 227, 9697-9710, 2008.

Kubatko, E.J., S. Bunya, C. Dawson, J.J. Westerink, “Dynamic p-adaptive Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for the Shallow Water Equations,” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 198, 1766-1774, 2009.

Bunya, S., E.J. Kubatko, J.J. Westerink, C. Dawson, “A Wetting and Drying Treatment for the Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Solution to the Shallow Water Equations,” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 198, 1548-1562, 2009.

Kubatko, E.J., S. Bunya, C. Dawson, J.J. Westerink, C. Mirabito, “A Performance Comparison of Continuous and Discontinuous Finite Element Shallow Water Models,” Journal of Scientific Computing, 40, 315-339, 2009.
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Collaborative Research: NSF PetaApps Storm Surge Modeling on Petascale Computers

Project Sponsor: National Science Foundation Award No. OCI-0746232

Collaborators: Clint Dawson, University of Texas at Austin; Anna Spagnuolo, Oakland University

Project Goal: Develop CG and DG based coastal hydrodynamics for peta-scale computers efficiently operating 10,000's of processors simultaneously and improve the physics by tightly coupling to rainfall-runoff models

Project Documentation:
Clint Dawson, Joannes Westerink, Ethan Kubatko, Jennifer Proft and Chris Mirabito, "Parallel Finite Element Models for Hurricane Storm Surges," Proceedings of the Teragrid '08 Conference, Las Vegas, NV, June 9-13, 2008.

E.J Kubatko, S. Bunya, C. Dawson, J.J. Westerink, C. Mirabito, “A Performance Comparison of Continuous and Discontinuous Finite Element Shallow Water Models,” Journal of Scientific Computing, 40, 315-339, 2009.

D.T. Resio and J.J. Westerink, “Hurricanes and the Physics of Surges,” Physics Today, 61, 9, 33-38, 2008.
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Air-Sea Interaction and Flow Resistance, Wave-Current and Vegetation Effects for Hurricane Storm Surge Computation

Project Sponsor: USACE-Morphos

Collaborators: Jane Smith and Ty Wamsley, CHL USACE-ERDC

Project Goal: Test improved bottom friction forumulation and air-sea drag relationships to refine model skill in storm surge forecasting

Project Documentation:
D.T. Resio and J.J. Westerink, “Hurricanes and the Physics of Surges,” Physics Today, 61, 9, 33-38, 2008.
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Riverine Flows, Tides and Surge in the Lower Mississippi River and Delta and Atchafalaya River and Delta

Project Sponsors: USACE-MVN

Collaborators: John Atkinson, Hugh Roberts, Arcadis; Hasan Pourtaheri, Nancy Powell, USACE-MVN

Project Goal: Refine and validate the SL15 model for riverine discharges, tides and surges in the Mississippi River and Delta and the Atchafalaya River and Delta. Study the influence of high riverine discharges on surge levels propagating up these rivers and through their distributaries.
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