Welcome to the CCHT! We develop computational models for wind waves and coastal circulation, and then apply these models to high-resolution simulations of ocean behavior. Our goals are to understand how coastlines are threatened during storms, how materials are transported in the coastal environment, and how to communicate these hazard risks for use in decision support. Our research spans the disciplines of coastal engineering, numerical methods, computational mathematics, and high-performance computing.

In this web site, we share our research progress, from development to application, and from coding to publishing. Learn more about What We Do and how to Join Our Team.

Alireza Gharagozlou defends PhD Dissertation

We gathered again for a successful defense! Alireza Gharagozlou defended his PhD dissertation to a mix of virtual and in-person attendees, who asked a lot of great questions about his research in modeling of storm-driven erosion in the Outer Banks. Congrats to Alireza!

Alireza starts his oral defense presentation.

Jessica Gorski

Updated 2021/07/29

M.S. Student (Graduate Research Assistant)
Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
North Carolina State University
Fitts-Woolard Hall, Room 3121
915 Partners Way
Raleigh NC 27607
jfgorski@ncsu.edu

I am a recent graduate of North Carolina State University, and I am excited to continue my education with the CCEE Department. As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to participate in multiple research projects with the coastal engineering team. My first research experience was funded by the College of Engineering’s Women and Minority Summer Research Program. After completing the 10-week research project, I started an undergraduate research assistant position and was introduced to the morphological model eXtreme Beach (XBeach). Since then, the majority of my research experience has been focused on nearshore morphodynamics and erosional modeling. Previously, I assisted a project funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers looking at the morphological response of a beach nourishment project located in Nags Head, North Carolina. As a research assistant, I helped in the development and training of a morphological emulator. Future work for this project includes incorporating climate change projections and investigating how these projections may impact the shoreline response.

I am working on a Department of Defense project, Forecasting Coastal Impacts from Tropical Cyclones along the US East and Gulf Coasts using the ADCIRC Prediction System, where I will be focusing on the sediment transport portion of the coastal impact forecasting. I am looking forward to using XBeach as a tool for erosional forecasting and collaborating with a larger team of researchers across the country.

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Jonese D. Pipkin

Updated 2021/07/29

M.S. Student
Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
North Carolina State University
Fitts-Woolard Hall, Room 3121
915 Partners Way
Raleigh NC 27606
jpipkin@ncsu.edu

Greetings! I am a first year M.S. student in the Coastal & Computational Hydraulics Team. As a born and raised North Carolinian, I have a firsthand understanding of the impact of hurricanes on our coastal areas. My earned bachelor’s degree in Earth & Environmental Science allowed me to explore and identify the angle of hurricane research that suited me best. Hence, I pursued a graduate program that incorporated computational & geospatial analysis with hurricane inundation. After being directed to NCSU’s coastal engineering site and diving into the CCHT website, I knew this was the ideal environment for me to build upon my research interests.

Initially, I will continue developing my engineering comprehension and later transition into assisting with research associated with the DHS CRCoE project. The work will continue to produce ArcGIS compatible shapefiles delineating maximum water levels, wind speeds, wave heights, and peak wave periods during hurricane events.

By expanding my skill and knowledge related to the water hazards hurricanes induce, my professional goal is to join an agency that monitors the influence of hurricanes on coastal regions to effectively reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities.

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Multi-Hazard Hurricane Vulnerability Model to Enable Resilience-Informed Decision

Hurricanes or typhoons are multi-hazard events that usually result in strong winds, storm surge, waves, and debris flow. A community-level multi-hazard hurricane risk analysis approach is proposed herein to account for the combined impacts of hazards driven by hurricanes including surge, wave, and wind. A tightly coupled ADCIRC and SWAN model is used to account for the surge and wave hazard. Community-level exposure analysis is conducted using a portfolio of building archetypes associated with each hazard. A building-level hurricane vulnerability model is developed using fragility functions to account for content, building envelope, and structural damage. These fragility functions calculate the exceedance probability of predefined damage states associated with each hazard. Then, a building damage state is calculated based on the maximum probability of being in each damage state corresponding to each hazard. The proposed hurricane risk model is then applied to Waveland, Mississippi, a community that was severely impacted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The main contribution of this research is modeling the community-level hurricane vulnerability in terms of damage to the building envelope and interior contents driven by surge, wave, and wind using fragility functions to provide a comprehensive model for resilience-informed decision-making.

OM Nofal, JW van de Lindt, G Yan, S Hamideh, JC Dietrich (2021). “Multi-Hazard Hurricane Vulnerability Model to Enable Resilience-Informed Decision.” Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, S El-Baradei, A Abodonya, A Singh, S Yazdani (eds.), 8(1), DOI: 10.14455/ISEC.2021.8(1).RAD-01.