Category Archives: DHS CRCoE 2016-2020
Visitors from Johnson C Smith University to CCHT
Fourteen students (and four faculty members) in CRC’s JCSU Summer Research Program visited our Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. The students shared presentations about their research projects, and then learned about computing- and resilience-related opportunities at NC State. This program is supported by the DHS Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence.
Dr. Dietrich poses with JCSU students and faculty outside of Mann Hall.
Conference: ADCIRC 2019
Influence of Storm Timing and Forward Speed on Tides and Storm Surge during Hurricane Matthew
The amount and extent of coastal flooding caused by hurricanes can be sensitive to the timing or speed of the storm. For storms moving parallel to the coast, the hazards can be stretched over a larger area. Hurricane Matthew was a powerful storm that impacted the southeastern U.S. during October 2016, moving mostly parallel to the coastline from Florida through North Carolina. In this study, three sources for atmospheric forcing are considered for a simulation of Matthew’s water levels, which are validated against extensive observations, and then the storm’s effects are explored on this long coastline. It is hypothesized that the spatial variability of Matthew’s effects on total water levels is partly due to the surge interacting nonlinearly with tides. By changing the time of occurrence of the storm, differences in storm surge are observed in different regions due to the storm coinciding with other periods in the tidal cycles. These differences are found to be as large as 1m and comparable to the tidal amplitude. A change in forward speed of the storm also should alter its associated flooding due to differences in the duration over which the storm impacts the coastal waters. With respect to the forward speed, the present study contributes to established results by considering the scenario of a shore-parallel hurricane. A faster storm caused an increase in peak water levels along the coast but a decrease in the overall volume of inundation. On the other hand, a slower storm pushed more water into the estuaries and bays and flooded a larger section of the coast. Implications for short-term forecasting and long-term design studies for storms moving parallel to long coastlines are discussed herein.
News: Modeling Florence’s Storm Surge
2019/04/26 – NCSU College of Engineering
After the Storm
After the Storm
Dr. Casey Dietrich, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE), leads the Coastal and Computational Hydraulics Team and develops computational models that predict storm surge and coastal flooding. Using the model ADCIRC, the team makes predictions about how high sea waters will rise, which areas will be flooded and for how long. These predictions are made for the entire coastline, and then his team visualizes the flooding at the scales of individual buildings and coastal infrastructure. During Florence, Dietrich’s team and collaborators acted as liaisons for state emergency managers to aid their decision making.
“The models are just one data point among many, but they’re helpful in understanding hazards and used to make predictions in real time — partly to make decisions about evacuation, where to deploy resources after, safe places to put emergency vehicles and water supplies,” he said.
The state emergency managers are able to use the flooding predictions to get immediate estimates on damages, which helps communities that are figuring out how much recovery will cost.
After Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Dietrich and his colleagues improved the models’ ability to forecast encroaching water along shorelines. Post-Florence, Dietrich said the research focus is to speed up the model and allow for more permutations to see what might happen if a storm slows down or shifts direction.
Chancellor’s Visit to CCEE Department
NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson visited the CCEE Department to learn more about our research in resilient infrastructure. The visit was organized as a poster session, with overviews of research from 10 faculty teams in related areas. Casey Dietrich presented an overview of the coastal engineering research, with help from Alejandra Ortiz and John Baugh.
Non-comprehensive overview of coastal engineering research at NC State.