Storm Surge Impact to Subterranean Areas by Hurricane Sandy, and Lessons for Japan’s Storm Surge Countermeasures

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Challender ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Storm Surge ◽  
Critical Infrastructure ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Recovery Phase ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Coastal Communities ◽  
Eastern Seaboard

Hurricane Sandy caused critical damage to subterranean infrastructure in New York and also claimed 285 human lives across the Eastern Seaboard. The storm surge impact easily overwhelmed existing pumping systems, devastating power supply and paralyzing transport. Despite extensive preparations and pre-storm public information efforts, inundation and underground flooding caused causalities. The size of the disaster, sheer scope of damage and multifaceted response spanning the onset through to the recovery phase provides useful lessons for Japan, given its vulnerability to similar storm surges and flooding disasters, such as the Ise Bay Typhoon of 1959. Given this, a delegation composed of members of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and Researchers from Japan’s Universities and Academic Societies working in disaster prevention conducted two surveys in 2013 and 2014. This involved hearing from emergency management officers in New York, Washington D.C and coastal communities about their experiences evacuating vulnerable residents and protecting critical infrastructure. The author of this paper was a member of both delegations. Based on fieldwork from these joint surveys and other materials, this paper outlines the scope of the damage that a storm of Sandy’s size was capable of inflicting, and looks at lessons applicable to Japan for preventing similar damage to infrastructure and human life in future storm surge events, and discusses how New York is attempting to become a more resilient city in preparation for the next flooding or storm surge disaster.

scholarly journals Extreme Climate Events, Household Decision-Making and Transitions in the Immediate Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Solecki ◽  
Robin Leichenko ◽  
David Eisenhauer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Storm Surge ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Scale Transformation ◽  
Household Decision ◽  
Surge Flooding ◽  
Term Response

AbstractIt is five years since Hurricane Sandy heavily damaged the New York- New Jersey Metropolitan region, and the fuller character of the long-term response can be better understood. The long-term response to Hurricane Sandy and the flooding risks it illustrated are set in myriad of individual and collective decisions taken during the time following the event. While the physical vulnerability of this region to storm surge flooding and climate change risks including sea level rise has been well-documented within the scholarly literature, Sandy’s impact placed decision-makingpost extreme events into the forefront of public and private discussions about the appropriate response. Some of the most fundamental choices were made by individual homeowners who houses were damaged and in some cases made uninhabitable following the storm. These individuals were forced to make decisions regarding where they would live and whether Sandy’s impact would result in their moving. In the disaster recovery and rebuilding context, these early household struggles about whether to leave or stay are often lost in the wider and longer narrative of recovery. To examine this early phase, this paper presents results of a research study that documented the ephemeral evidence of the initial phase of recovery in coastal communities that were heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge and flooding. Hurricane Sandy and the immediate response to the storm created conditions for a potential large-scale transformation with respect to settlement of the coastal zone. In the paper, we examine and analyze survey and interview results of sixty-one residents and two dozen local stakeholders and practitioners to understand the stresses and transitions experienced by flooded households and the implications for the longer term resiliency of the communities in which they are located.

scholarly journals The Storm Surge and Sub-Grid Inundation Modeling in New York City during Hurricane Sandy

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Wang ◽  
Jon Loftis ◽  
Zhuo Liu ◽  
David Forrest ◽  
Joseph Zhang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Storm Surge ◽  
York City ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Inundation Modeling

scholarly journals Road assessment after flood events using non-authoritative data

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 4155-4179 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Schnebele ◽  
G. Cervone ◽  
N. Waters
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Storm Surge ◽  
York City ◽  
Damage Assessment ◽  
Flood Damage ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Flood Events ◽  
Geostatistical Interpolation ◽  
Damage Map

Abstract. This research proposes a methodology that leverages non-authoritative data to augment flood extent mapping and the evaluation of transportation infrastructure. The novelty of this approach is the application of freely available, non-authoritative data and its integration with established data and methods. Crowdsourced photos and volunteered geographic data are fused together using a geostatistical interpolation to create an estimation of flood damage in New York City following Hurricane Sandy. This damage assessment is utilized to augment an authoritative storm surge map as well as to create a road damage map for the affected region.

A Secure Hybrid Network Solution to Enhance the Resilience of the UK Government National Critical Infrastructure TETRA Deployment

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Devon Bennett ◽  
Hamid Jahankhani ◽  
Mohammad Dastbaz ◽  
Hossein Jahankhani
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Critical Infrastructure ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Cellular Systems ◽  
Hybrid Network ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
Communication Traffic ◽  
The Uk

In developed economies, electronic communication infrastructures are crucial for daily public, private, and business interactions. Cellular systems are extensively used for business communications, private interaction, and in some cases, public information services, via such uses as mass SMS messaging. The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is at the core of all communications platforms. It was used primarily for voice communication purposes, but with current technological advances, this platform has been transformed from a voice to voice interface to a web enabled multimedia platform that provides commercial, business, and e-commerce services to the public. In response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist acts in New York City, the UK government introduced a policy of separating and transferring all emergency communication traffic from the PSTN to a digital public safety network based on the TETRA architecture. This paper extends the utilisation of the TETRA deployment by discussing a secure MANET hybrid solution for use in extreme situations as a short/mid-term EMS organisational communication platform for emergency and rescue operations.

scholarly journals Cross-scale modeling of storm surge, tide, and inundation in Mid-Atlantic Bight and New York City during Hurricane Sandy, 2012

2020 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 106544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuo Liu ◽  
Harry Wang ◽  
Y. Joseph Zhang ◽  
Linus Magnusson ◽  
J. Derek Loftis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Storm Surge ◽  
York City ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Scale Modeling

scholarly journals An Assessment of Storm Surge Risk in Coastal Communities in the Rio Grande Valley

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Kyne
Keyword(s):  
Storm Surge ◽  
Rio Grande Valley ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Community Survey ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Coastal Communities ◽  
American Community Survey ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Demographic Attributes

(1) Background: Cameron County, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley, holds historical records for storm surges with noticeable property damage, fatalities, and injuries; (2) Methods: using storm surge hazard datasets from the National Oceanic and Atlantic Agency (NOAA), and American Community Survey (ACS) 2019 datasets and Geographic Information System (GIS), the study estimates at-risk population and their socio-demographic attributes; (4) Conclusions: Estimated water levels of a storm surge could be reached up to 5 feet in category 1 event, 9 feet in category 2, 17 feet in category 3, and above 20 feet in category 4 and 5. In the category 5 event, there is an estimated 37% (159,659) of the total county’s population (434,294) will be under flooded water. Suggestions are made to better prepare and successfully evaluate.

scholarly journals Hydrodynamic and Waves Response during Storm Surges on the Southern Brazilian Coast: A Hindcast Study

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 3538
Author(s):  
Andre de Souza de Lima ◽  
Arslaan Khalid ◽  
Tyler Will Miesse ◽  
Felicio Cassalho ◽  
Celso Ferreira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Storm Surge ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Coastal Communities ◽  
Brazilian Coast ◽  
Forecast System ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Meteorological Forcing ◽  
The Impact

The Southern Brazilian Coast is highly susceptible to storm surges that often lead to coastal flooding and erosive processes, significantly impacting coastal communities. In addition, climate change is expected to result in expressive increases in wave heights due to more intense and frequent storms, which, in conjunction with sea-level rise (SLR), has the potential to exacerbate the impact of storm surges on coastal communities. The ability to predict and simulate such events provides a powerful tool for coastal risk reduction and adaptation. In this context, this study aims to investigate how accurately storm surge events can be simulated in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean employing the coupled ADCIRC+SWAN hydrodynamic and phase-averaged wave numerical modeling framework given the significant data scarcity constraints of the region. The model’s total water level (TWL) and significant wave height (Hs) outputs, driven by different sources of meteorological forcing, i.e., the Fifth Generation of ECMWF Atmospheric Reanalysis (ERA 5), the Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2), and the Global Forecast System (GFS), were validated for three recent storm events that affected the coast (2016, 2017, and 2019). In order to assess the potentially increasing storm surge impacts due to sea-level rise, a case study was implemented to locally evaluate the modeling approach using the most accurate model setup for two 2100 SLR projections (RCP 4.5 and 8.5). Despite a TWL underestimation in all sets of simulations, the CFSv2 model stood out as the most consistent meteorological forcing for the hindcasting of the storm surge and waves in the numerical model, with an RMSE range varying from 0.19 m to 0.37 m, and an RMSE of 0.56 m for Hs during the most significant event. ERA5 was highlighted as the second most accurate meteorological forcing, while adequately simulating the peak timings. The SLR study case demonstrated a possible increase of up to 82% in the TWL during the same event. Despite the limitations imposed by the lack of continuous and densely distributed observational data, as well as up to date topobathymetric datasets, the proposed framework was capable of expanding TWL and Hs information, previously available for a handful of gauge stations, to a spatially distributed and temporally unlimited scale. This more comprehensive understanding of such extreme events represents valuable knowledge for the potential implementation of more adequate coastal management and engineering practices for the Brazilian coastal zone, especially under changing climate conditions.

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