Impacts of Hurricane Storm Surge on Infrastructure Vulnerability for an Evolving Coastal Landscape

Abstract

Predicting coastal infrastructure reliability during hurricane events is important for risk-based design and disaster planning, including delineating viable emergency response routes. Previous research has focused on either infrastructure vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding, or the impact of changing sea level and landforms on surge dynamics. This paper represents a multidisciplinary effort to provide an integrative model of the combined impacts of sea-level rise, landscape changes, and coastal flooding on the vulnerability of highway bridges-the only access points between barrier islands and mainland communities-during extreme storms. Coastal flooding is forward modeled for static projections of geomorphic change. First-order parameters that are adjusted include sea level and land surface elevation. These parameters are varied for each storm simulation to evaluate relative impact on the performance of bridges surrounding Freeport, Texas. Vulnerability is estimated by evaluating both the probability of structural failure given surge and wave loads as well as the time inundated. The probability of bridge failure is found to increase with storm intensity and sea level because bridge fragility increases with storm surge height. The impact of a shifting landscape on bridge accessibility is more complex; barrier island erosion and transgression can increase, decrease, or produce no change in inundation times for storms of different intensity due to changes in wind-setup and back-bay interactions. These results suggest that tying down bridge spans and elevating low-lying roadways approaching bridges may enhance efforts aimed at protecting critical infrastructure.

Usable Science for Managing the Risks of Sea‐Level Rise

“…While “bathtub” models represent flooding extent by projecting ESLs, as measured at tide gauges, onto topography (e.g., as measured via high‐resolution LIDAR) without accounting for local atmosphere/ocean dynamics or the frictional interference of the natural or built environment to determine extent of flooding, hydrodynamic models accounting for of the flow of water in the ocean and onto land reveal a more complex story (Deb & Ferreira, ; Lin et al, , ; Orton et al, ; J. Wang et al, ). Nonlinear hydrodynamic responses vary spatially as a function of coastal topography, land use, and storm characteristics (Atkinson et al, ; Anarde et al, ; Barnard et al, ; Ding et al, ; Ferreira et al, ; Glass et al, ; Mousavi et al, ; Passeri et al, ; Smith et al, ; Wang et al, ; Woodruff et al, ; Zhang et al, ). Most studies using hydrodynamic models have focused on the effects of storm surge (e.g., Muis et al, ), though in some areas precipitation‐driven flooding is of crucial importance (Wahl & Chambers, ; Wright et al, ).…”

“…The coast is not simply a static background over which water flows, though most studies of coastal flood hazards treat it as such. It instead exhibits dynamic growth and destruction of land and ecosystems (Anarde et al, ; Barnard et al, ; Glass et al, ; Le Cozannet et al, ; Passeri et al, ). Waves, currents, and tides redistribute sediment along and across the coastal zone, resulting in shoreline dynamics significantly different than would occur in a static coastal landscape (Ashton et al, ; Murray et al, ; Paola et al, ; Payo et al, ).…”

Community flood vulnerability and risk assessment: An empirical predictive modeling approach

“…With information on hazard and exposure, flood risk assessment can be achieved via an engineering approach through incorporating flood vulnerability curves indicating losses, loss ratios, or probabilities of losses, as a function of flood intensity measure, where water depth is usually adopted as the intensity measure for flood vulnerability and risk assessment (Budiyono et al, 2015; Custer & Nishijima, 2015; De Risi et al, 2013; Foudi et al, 2015; Karagiorgos et al, 2016). When a probability of loss or failure of a structural or infrastructural system is computed with respect to intensity measure or the exceedance value of intensity measure, the probability curve may also be called a fragility curve (e.g., Anarde et al, 2018; Custer & Nishijima, 2015). Vulnerability curves may be created to estimate economic loss due to future flood events for administrative areas (e.g., Feyen et al, 2012).…”

“Dose-Response” Vulnerability Assessment of Urban Power Supply Network: Foundation for Its Sustainability and Resilience

“…In order to address these two new attributes, it is necessary to establish an appropriate method to conduct the vulnerability assessment for power supply network. In general, "vulnerability" should be clear with respect to the impact of the infrastructure system due to the given event taken into consideration [9,14,19].…”