Impact of the Duration of Coastal Flooding on Infrastructure

Abstract

Coastal communities are experiencing a gradual increase in flooding. Studies focus on the extent and depth of how coastal flooding will change as sea levels rise and impacts on infrastructure needed for risk assessments. However, there is limited information on how the duration of coastal flooding will change; specifically, in a format needed to support risk assessments. Therefore, the objective of this article is to highlight the need for annual exceedance probability curves by examining potential impacts on infrastructure in the city of Norfolk, Virginia. The analysis translates tide data to simulate stationarity and combines it with increments of rising sea levels to represent future tide elevations. The authors use a Poisson probability distribution to calculate flood duration exceedance levels for a specified threshold level and estimate how durations and probabilities could change over time. The article concludes with an assessment of how increasing flood durations can impact infrastructure systems.

Thresholds in Road Network Functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf Barrier Islands

“…Extreme water levels have been used to examine the direct and indirect impacts of coastal floods on transportation systems and assess the susceptibility of the network to flood‐induced failure (Fant et al., 2021; Habel et al., 2020; Jacobs et al., 2018; Pezza & White, 2021). Annual exceedance probabilities and average recurrence intervals are commonly applied for infrastructure design and assessment of flood risk (Apel et al., 2004, 2006; Hackl et al., 2018; Haigh et al., 2014; Sweet & Park, 2014; Vitousek et al., 2017; Wahl et al., 2017).…”

“…In addition to graph‐based methods, recent work has focused on investigating disruption to road networks using techniques from agent‐based traffic simulation paired with hydrodynamic models of flooding, specifically to look at travel time delays (e.g., Hummel et al., 2020; Papakonstantinou et al., 2019). Studies consider road and other transportation networks in urban coastal settings (de Bruijn et al., 2019; Kasmalkar et al., 2020, 2021; Kermanshah & Derrible, 2017; Pezza & White, 2021; Plane et al., 2019; Rotzoll & Fletcher, 2013; Sadler et al., 2017; Suarez et al., 2005; Sweet et al., 2014) and in fluvial floodplains and upland catchments (Abdulla & Birgisson, 2021; Arrighi et al., 2021; Dave et al., 2021; Dong, Esmalian, et al., 2020; Dong et al., 2022; Evans et al., 2020; Hummel et al., 2020; Kelleher & McPhillips, 2020; Papakonstantinou et al., 2019; Pregnolato et al., 2017; Singh et al., 2018; Versini et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2019); others focus on water‐treatment systems in low‐lying coastal regions (Hummel et al., 2018) or multiple layers of infrastructure networks (Douglas et al., 2016; Habel et al., 2020, 2017; Koks et al., 2019; Neumann et al., 2021). To understand and forecast the future dynamics of developed barrier islands, more inquiry is needed to link thresholds in road network functioning to the physical forces that drive coastal change.…”

Thresholds in road network functioning on US Atlantic and Gulf barrier islands

“…Extreme water levels have been used to examine the direct and indirect impacts of coastal floods on transportation systems and assess the susceptibility of the network to flood-induced failure (Fant et al 2021;Habel et al, 2020;Jacobs et al, 2018;Pezza & White, 2021). Annual exceedance probabilities and average recurrence intervals are commonly applied for infrastructure design and assessment of flood risk (Apel et al, 2004(Apel et al, , 2006Hackl et al, 2018;Haigh et al, 2014;Vitousek et al, 2017;Wahl et al, 2017).…”

“…We also do not explicitly consider flood drivers or specific impacts of flooding (e.g., standing water, road damage, debris and sediment deposition), and instead focus on network disruption based purely on elevation. Future work can incorporate observations on how road networks are impacted by relative contributions of specific drivers from marine sources (Serafin et al, 2017) and others, such as pluvial (Dave et al, 2021;Evans et al, 2020;Kelleher & McPhillips, 2020;Neumann et al, 2021;Pregnolato et al, 2017) or groundwater flooding (Habel et al 2017(Habel et al , 2020Plane et al, 2019;Rotzoll & Fletcher, 2013), or the potential importance of variability in flood duration (Arrighi et al, 2021;Darestani et al, 2021;de Bruijn et al, 2019;Najibi & Devineni, 2018;Pezza & White, 2021;.…”

“…Within the large and rapidly expanding body of research into climate-driven disruptions to critical infrastructure (Faturechi & Miller-Hooks, 2014;Jaroszweski et al, 2014;Markolf et al, 2019;Neumann et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2020), a subset is exploring specifically the exposure and susceptibility of infrastructure to different drivers of flood disturbance. Studies consider road and other transportation networks in urban coastal settings (de Bruijn et al, 2019;Kaskalmar et al, 2020;Kermanshah & Derrible, 2017;Plane et al, 2019;Rotzoll & Fletcher, 2013;Suarez et al, 2005;Pezza & White, 2021) and in fluvial floodplains and upland catchments (Abdulla & Birgisson, 2021;Arrighi et al, 2021;Dave et al, 2021;Dong et al, 2020a;Evans et al, 2020;Kelleher & McPhillips, 2020;Pregnolato et al, 2017;Singh et al, 2018;Versini et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2019); others focus on water-treatment systems in low-lying coastal regions (Hummel et al, 2018) or multiple layers of infrastructure networks (Douglas et al, 2016;Habel et al 2017Habel et al , 2020Koks et al, 2019;Neumann et al, 2021).…”