Hurricane Storm Surge and Wave Modeling in Southern Louisiana: A Brief Overview

This paper provides a brief overview of several ongoing modeling projects that seek to predict the impact of physical features on hurricane storm surge and waves along the Louisiana Gulf Coast. All of the modeling projects described herein make use of a coupled ADCIRC/STWAVE computer model that is being developed specifically for capturing the inundation dynamics of Southern Louisiana. The projects also make use of a common statistical framework and a suite of 152 synthetic hurricane wind and pressure fields that have been developed to represent the storm dynamics along this region of the coast. This paper provides an overview of the statistical method, the computer models being applied, the physical features resolved by the finite element mesh, the validation exercises, the process for coupling and running the ADCIRC/STWAVE model, and a description of several investigations for which the coupled modeling system is being applied. Preliminary results and conclusions are presented.