Improved Methods for Estimating Flood Depth Exceedances Within Storm Surge Protection Systems

Contemporary studies conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate probability distributions of flooding on the interior of ring levee systems by estimating surge exceedances at points along levee system boundaries, calculating overtopping volumes generated by this surface, then passing the resulting volumes of water through a drainage model to calculate interior flood depths. This approach may not accurately represent the exceedance probability of flood depths within the system interior; a storm producing 100-year surge at one point is unlikely to simultaneously produce 100-year surge levels everywhere around the system exterior. A conceptually preferred approach estimates surge and waves associated with a large set of storms. Each storm is run through the interior model separately, and the resulting flood depths are weighted by a parameterized likelihood of each synthetic storm. This results in an empirical distribution of flood depths accounting for geospatial variation in any individual storm's characteristics. This method can also better account for the probability of levee breaches or other system failures. The two methods can produce different estimates of flood depth exceedances and damage when applied to storm surge flooding in coastal Louisiana. Even differences in flood depth exceedances of less than 0.2 m can still produce large differences in projected damage. This article identifies and discusses differences in estimated flood depths and damage produced by each method within multiple Louisiana protection systems. The novel coupled dynamics approach represents a step toward enabling risk-based design standards.