From regional flood risk analysis to local: comparing coastal flooding in Miami Beach with XBeach and SFINCS
Abstract
Coastal flooding affects low-lying communities around the world and is expected to increase due to climate change effects on sea-level rise, wave action, and ecosystem degradation. To inform flood risk management strategies, we require an accurate definition of the risk and socioeconomic impact of flooding. Flood risk assessments often rely on large-scale, regional hydrodynamic models. However, while wave and surge modeling has been thoroughly studied, the link between coastal hydrodynamics and inland flooding is still a work in progress. Moreover, the characterization of wave-induced flooding in complex environments, such as coral reef-lined coasts, has been much less attended. Understanding how to model wave-induced flooding is essential to understanding the future coastal hazards along these coastlines. This study compares three different approaches to extract important insight for future flood modeling and risk assessments: a fully process-resolving numerical model is compared in Miami Beach for different storm probabilities against a cross-shore flood solution and a new model able to reproduce inland flooding in an efficient way. Miami Beach is characterized by low-lying lands and by the presence of coral reefs, which makes it a somewhat novel area for studying wave-driven coastal flooding processes. Results from XBeach are compared with SFINCS, a new model that compounds flooding by using water levels from the swash zone to model inland water levels. Results are also compared with a feasible regional solution based on a geospatial reconstruction of the flood plain from cross-shore results. The study compares these three approaches, extracts conclusions for flooding at local to regional scales in complex coastal environments and, considers the hydrodynamic effects of coastal ecosystems. This study aims to give a critical insight into the local use of flood modeling approaches and the new SFINCS numerical model for coastal flood hazard assessments.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMNH0380012G
- Keywords:
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- 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4318 Statistical analysis;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4327 Resilience;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4556 Sea level: variations and mean;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL