Modeling the Hydrodynamic Performance of a Conceptual Storm Surge Barrier System for the Galveston Bay Region
Publication: Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 5
Abstract
For Galveston Bay and much of the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, the havoc imparted by the hurricanes of 1900 and 1915, in addition to Hurricane Ike of 2008, served to expose the growing and unmitigated flood risks for the surrounding local communities, ecosystems, and economies. Previous studies have proposed methods for regional storm surge protection but have emphasized either (1) localized protection for specific areas or (2) shortening of the coastline with structural barrier systems placed across major tidal inlets and barrier islands. In this study, a new storm surge reduction strategy—the Mid-Bay Strategy (MBS)—was developed that incorporates functional elements from each approach and takes advantage of existing dredged material and disposal sites adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel (HSC) near the middle of Galveston Bay (i.e., the Mid-Bay). The MBS consists of a set of interacting components that includes the beneficial use of dredged material, wetland restoration, elevated roadways, and a primary gate structure across the navigable HSC within Galveston Bay. The final design and implementation of such components will likely depend on the availability of federal, state, and local funding sources, thereby influencing the final design-build costs, scheduling, and constructability. The objective of this study was to provide a planning-level assessment of the hydrodynamic performance of the MBS under two phases of constructed implementation using a coupled hydrodynamic computational model. A suite of hurricane events, including historical, pseudosynthetic, and fully synthetic events, was used to evaluate the dredged MBS berm heights for each phase of construction. In Phases 1 and 2, the optimal berm heights for storm surge reduction were identified as 7.3 m (24 ft) and 6.1 m (20 ft), respectively, for a specific proxy storm. The maximum storm surge reduction ranged from 4.57 m (15 ft) to 5.33 m (17.5 ft) for west and north Galveston Bay, respectively, for Phases 1 and 2. Additional hurricanes were simulated to analyze the MBS’s optimized level of effective protection. Overall, the results show that the MBS was able to provide sufficient storm surge protection for all storms within the evaluation suite. In addition, this work highlights the importance of selecting appropriate proxy storms for achieving reliable and rapid assessments of the performance of conceptual storm surge protection strategies.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Houston Endowment for providing financial support and the Texas Advanced Computing Center for computational resources. The authors also extend sincere gratitude and appreciation to Gajanan Choudary, Ph.D., candidate at the University of Texas at Austin; undergraduate researchers Avi Gori and J. D. Nellis at Rice University; and the SSPEED Center’s Larry Dunbar and Jim Blackburn for their help and guidance in this research. Finally, the authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their advice and assistance in preparing this manuscript.
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Published In
Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 5 • September 2017
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 24, 2016
Accepted: Nov 23, 2016
Published online: Mar 27, 2017
Discussion open until: Aug 27, 2017
Published in print: Sep 1, 2017
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