The Integration of a Hurricane Wind Hazard Model with Deep-Water and Nearshore Wave Models

Along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal regions of the United States, the main source of economic losses from natural hazards are produced by hurricanes. As hotels and other structures continue to be built on small islands and along the coastline of the continental USA, the value of exposed property continues to increase as does the need for a risk model to deal with the design and insurance issues for both flood and wind. A hurricane hazard model was developed for modeling the hurricane risk along the US coastline, and included the effects of changing sea surface roughness and the air-sea temperatures difference on the estimated surface-level wind speeds. This model has been extensively validated by comparing time histories of predicted wind speed and direction with the corresponding measured data from over 200 marine and land based anemometers during twenty different hurricanes. The model forms the basis of the design wind speeds given in the US National wind loading standard, ASCE-7. Under the support of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a research is undergoing at ARA to develop an advanced severe storm coastal risk assessment methodology in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's HAZUS-MH model. This paper described one part of the research - the integration of the hurricane hazard model designed above with wave models to enhance coastal flood modeling. The model results were compared with real-time buoy data at National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) during several major hurricanes. The evaluation showed that the linked models could provide a good representation of the hurricane wave fields, provided that good estimates of hurricane generated wind fields were available.