Predicting storm surges: applying state of the art technology

Recent severe flooding around the UK coast is a stark reminder of the risks presented by storm surges – caused by a combination of high tides, winds and low pressure. The impacts on people, property and infrastructure, as recent events in Dawlish illustrate, can be significant. Storm surges, and their potential impacts, need to be understood by coastal managers, affected communities and all those with assets on the coastline. International flood and coastal engineering specialist HR Wallingford has developed SMARTtide, a state of the art tool that can now be used to predict storm surges in UK waters. 

“Parts of the UK have recently experienced some of the highest storm surges since 1953,” says Graham Siggers, hydrodynamics and metocean group manager at HR Wallingford. “The challenge is to be able to provide accurate simulations of such events, either for forecasting, development planning, or to inform risk assessments. When it comes to simulating the local effects of storm surges, we have now further developed SMARTtide, a state of the art predictive tool originally set up for tidal resource assessment, to model storm surges in UK waters.” 

Graham adds: “This new development of  SMARTtide allows us to take  meteorological predictions and look at the effects of storm surges in very fine detail (200m resolution) along the coastline or into estuaries. This means the model can simulate storm surges at a very localised level informing risk assessments for coastal planning or insurance.”

Developed by HR Wallingford, SMARTtide was originally commissioned and funded by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) to identify the most efficient sites for tidal energy converters, tidal arrays or tidal barrage schemes around the UK and French coastlines. The model continues to be used for this purpose and can now also be used for storm surge simulation.

More information on SMARTtide is available at http://www.hrwallingford.com/ projects/smarttide.

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About HR Wallingford

HR Wallingford is an independent engineering and environmental hydraulics organisation. We deliver practical solutions to complex water-related challenges faced by our international clients. A dynamic research programme underpins all that we do and keeps us at the leading edge. Our unique mix of know-how, assets and facilities includes state of the art physical modelling laboratories, a full range of numerical modelling tools and, above all, enthusiastic people with world-renowned skills and expertise.

About SMARTtide

The data that supports SMARTtide is the result of an earlier £450,000 ETI project, which was led by Black & Veatch, in collaboration with HR Wallingford and the University of Edinburgh. That project improved the understanding of the possible interactions between tidal energy extraction systems as they are deployed between now and 2050.

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Sea and storm coastal habitats offer strongest defense

Surging storms and rising seas threaten millions of U.S. residents and billions of dollars in property along coastlines. The nation's strongest defense, according to a new study by scientists with the Natural Capital Project at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, comes from natural coastal habitats. 

Of the 25 most densely populated counties in the United States, 23 of them are along the coastline. The study, "Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms" published in Nature Climate Change, mapped the entire U.S. coastline and reports that habitats such as sea grasses, mangroves, sand dunes, and coral reefs currently protect two-thirds of the U.S. coastline, including at-risk areas such as New York and Florida. 

"The natural environment plays a key role in protecting our nation's coasts," said study lead author Katie Arkema, a Woods postdoctoral scholar. "If we lose these defenses, we will either have to have massive investments in engineered defenses or risk greater damage to millions of people and billions in property." 

Damage to the town of Mantoloking, New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. Photo in the public domain. 

Although attempts at protecting coastal population centers have typically involved hardening shorelines with "gray technologies" such as cement sea walls, there are disadvantages to engineered solutions. Not only are they expensive to build and difficult to maintain, but they can reduce the natural beauty of an area, increase erosion, affect water quality, and deplete the number of marine creatures living in the region. In fact, many "gray" solutions may actually damage natural habitats that are already acting as protection for coastlines. 

Conservation and restoration of shoreline marshes, seagrass beds, oyster beds, coral reefs, dunes, coastal forests, and large kelp forests offer natural defense mechanisms for coastlines, buffering them from waves and storm surges. Loss of these habitats would increase the vulnerability of human populations, with the economies of the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico expected to suffer the most damage. 

"Hardening our shorelines with sea walls and other costly engineering shouldn't be the default solution," says Peter Kareiva, the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and co-author of the study. "This study helps us identify those places and opportunities we have to keep nature protecting our coastal communities – and giving us all the other benefits it can provide, such as recreation, fish nurseries, water filtration and erosion control." 

Hurricane Sandy alone caused $68 billion in damage to the U.S. Soon, billions more will be spent on restoration of other areas affected by the storm along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. This study provides critical national and localized information for coastal planners who are considering where conservation and restoration efforts could have the biggest impacts. 

"As a nation, we should be investing in nature to protect our coastal communities," said Mary Ruckelshaus, managing director of the Natural Capital Project. "The number of people, poor families, elderly and total value of residential property that are most exposed to hazards can be reduced by half if existing coastal habitats remain fully intact." 



CITATION: Arkema, K. et al. Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms. 2013. Nature Climate Change, 3, 913-918. 
Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/1011-kimbrough-coastal-habitats-climate-change-defense.html#0TVixRtUgIG1WDSU.99

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ECSA 53: Estuaries and coastal areas in times of intense change

ECSA 53: Estuaries and coastal areas in times of intense change

13 – 17 October 2013, Shanghai, China

ECSA’s next major Symposium, ECSA 53 will take place in partnership with the State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (SKLEC) at East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

The close links between ECSA and Elsevier (Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science) have already proven to be very beneficial and based on that historical success we propose to further intensify our long lasting co-operation. This time this co-operation is to organize a meeting in a part of the world from where we expect further excellent scientific results: China. 

The fast economic growth and related human activities in China during the last few decades are dramatically influencing the environment, from river catchments to estuaries and seas; and natural phenomena further amplify these effects. One of these rapidly changing systems is the Yangtze estuary, with Shanghai, the largest city in China, located close to it. The Yangtze is the 3rd largest river in the world, and constitutes an excellent case study for large scale impacts on ecosystems due to human activities and an excellent place for one of the major global events in 2013. 

Conference Topics

• Functioning of estuarine and coastal waters
• Estuarine Wetlands, their understanding, restoration, rehabilitation, filter function and role in human health
• Inputs to aquatic ecosystems of contaminants, nano-particles, nutrients; partitioning, bioavailability, bioaccumulation and health
• Coastal water - Catchment links, implications and sustainable solutions
• Eutrophication, anoxia and harmful algal blooms
• Environmental challenges and remediation in view of climate change and related phenomena
• Geomorphological, physical and ecological effects of engineering constructions within estuarine systems and coastal waters
• Estuarine ecosystem health and governance
• EMECS Session "Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas"
• Quantifying economic and ecological sustainability
• Economic development and ecological and socio-cultural risks: the socio-cultural-economic-ecology interface
• Technical developments in detecting change and managing heavily modified estuaries
• Strategies and Tools for improved estuarine management
• Special Session/Workshop “Writing, refereeing and publishing scientific papers”

Submit your abstract here

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Conference Chairs

Victor N. de Jonge, University of Hull, UK
Yunxuan Zhou, State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
Zhongyuan Chen, State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China (Conference Co-chair)

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