CWA is looking forward to presenting a paper co-authored by three CWA employees at the PORTS ’19 conference in Pittsburgh, PA on September 17. For those in attendance at the conference, our presentation will be presented from 2:20pm to 2:40pm at Commonwealth 2.
Understanding Flooding Hazards Posed to Coastal Infrastructure from Extreme Ocean-Driven Events at Future Sea Levels
Abstract
The risk of ocean-driven flooding in the vicinity of coastal infrastructure is increasing rapidly as sea levels rise. To facilitate future planning efforts such as port site selection, computer modelling can be performed to determine inundation impacts resulting from sea level rise, storm surge, extreme wind waves, and tsunamis. A vulnerability assessment of infrastructure in 14 communities in British Columbia, Canada found that some communities will experience significantly shallower tsunami waves or were more sheltered from storm surge and wind wave effects than immediately adjacent shorelines, suggesting that relatively minor changes to a future port or marine terminal’s intended location could have a major impact on the potential level of damage resulting from an extreme ocean-driven event. Additionally, naturally-occurring sea formations such as coral reefs may lend themselves to mitigate the risks associated with extreme events. The methodology and results presented herein can be applied to site selection, infrastructure vulnerability assessments, and other similar evaluations.