News: Developing Storm Surge Visualization

2014/10/29 – NC Sea Grant Coastwatch Currents
Picture This: Developing Storm Surge Visualization

When a tropical storm or hurricane develops in the open ocean, the National Hurricane Center, known as NHC, issues advisories that anticipate the track and intensity of the wind field. These advisories predict when and where the hurricane is expected to make landfall, even when the storm is far away from the coast.

This information serves as an input for the ocean model, which then predicts the water levels or storm surges, and wave heights created by these winds at various locations along our coastline for the coming days. These results will convey a greater meaning to the end user when visualized properly. The chief objective for our project is to improve the communication of these model outputs to the end-user by producing them in popular file formats like that of GIS based shapefiles and KMZ files used in Google Earth.

News: Department Video

The following video explains some of our work in the CCEE Department at North Carolina State University, specifically in the focus area of water resources, coastal and environmental engineering.

News: Sea Change

2014/05/28 – NC State Engineering Magazine
Working with one of North Carolina’s most valuable resources

Dietrich came to NC State with a wealth of experience in coastal modeling, most of it done along the Gulf Coast of the United States. He will soon begin a project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to model North Carolina’s coast. Dietrich is part of a research community using a computer model called ADCIRC to predict everything from storm surge and flooding to the feasibility of dredging, or where material floating in the ocean might end up.

When a hurricane is bearing down on the coastline, running the models quickly is of the essence. But the faster the model runs, the less accurate it is. Improving the models so that the time and accuracy trade-off isn’t as sharp is part of Dietrich’s work.

So is figuring out the best ways to visualize the results and get the modeling information to local emergency management officials along the coast so that they can use it.

“It doesn’t help anybody if we are doing this in an empty room somewhere and not sharing the results with the community and sharing them in a way that will maximize their use and maximize their impact,” he said.

Continue reading →

News: Hazard Resilience in Coastal Communities

2014/05/14 – North Carolina Sea Grant Coastwatch
Coastal Science Serves North Carolina: Sea Grant Funds New Research Projects

Using a high-resolution modeling system, the researchers will expand the utility and accuracy of wave, storm-surge and flooding forecast guidance available to emergency managers in North Carolina. The accurate prediction of these elements is essential for the safety of people and property.

News: Welcome to NC State

2013/10/16 – CCEE
Coastal Engineering Expert Casey Dietrich Joins CCEE Faculty

Dietrich’s work addresses coastal processes, ranging from hurricanes to sediment transport, both of which can transform regions, albeit at rates ranging from hours to many years. Dietrich develops models to describe the oceans in deep water and the nearshore and then validates them against the best available measurements and knowledge of natural behavior. These models lead to improved understanding of the natural and built environments. His models have been used for levee design in New Orleans by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and for floodplain risk assessment along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He has also applied his models to forecast coastal flooding during recent storms including Hurricane Isaac (2012) and oil transport following the BP spill in 2010. He plans to extend his models for civil engineering applications along the North Carolina coastline.

Also click here to see the profile of Casey Dietrich in the college’s list of new faculty.

News: Model Predictions of Surface Oil Transport

2013/07/10 – Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative
Study Evaluates Accuracy of 2010 Model Predictions for Oil Spill Movement

During the 2010 oil spill, emergency responders needed forecasts of where oil would go given different scenarios and weather conditions, not just information of current oil location. Forecasts had to account for this first-time situation of oil coming from a deep water source and thus, “the important processes that contribute to oil movement in deep water, on the continental shelf, and within the complex nearshore environment.” Forecasters used the coupled SWAN (Simulating Waves Nearshore) and ADCIRC (Advanced CIRCulation) models to simulate currents that accounted for tides, rivers, winds, and waves. They adjusted their models with data from Lagrangian particle tracking to simulate “short-term (less than 1 week) oil movement.”

News: Modeling of Hydrocarbons in the Environment

The following video explains some of our work with CARTHE, and it includes a few visualizations of our modeling of the oil spill following the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.

News: Large-Scale Simulations of Coastal Flooding

2013/04/04 – The Daily Texan
UT research group uses math, simulations to analyze hurricanes
by Mark Carrion

Casey Dietrich is one of 14 researchers besides Dawson who works in the research group. He said having access to Stampede, UT’s new and powerful supercomputer, is important for the simulations the group runs.

“We’re very lucky we get access to one of the largest supercomputers in the world,” Dietrich said. “That opens the door for us to run larger, more interesting problems.”

Dietrich said the models they run use calculations from Stampede that allow them to analyze changes in an area as small as 20 meters.

“We can really see how the flooding is affecting the environment,” Dietrich said.