Flood and Coastal Storm Damage Reduction R&D Program Overview

Flood and Coastal Storm 

Damage Reduction 

R&D Program Overview 

Cary Talbot, PhD, PE 

Program Manager 

ERDC - Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory 

August 23, 2012 

Flood Risk Management - Silver Jackets Workshop

Research Area Objectives 

Develop advanced and enabling technologies to sustain 

multipurpose water resources projects; for efficient and 

effective emergency management; and ensure product 

consistency with other business lines and research areas. 

BUILDING STRONG ® 

Innovative solutions for a safer, better world

FRM Technology Transition 

• Review of product delivery plans to ensure direct 

relevance to USACE practices/processes 

• USACE Communities of Practice & Stakeholders are 

the customer 

• Product specific. May include Technical 

Documents; Guidance Documents; Electronic 

media; Training; Interactions; AIS/Enterprise 

Frameworks; Knowledge Hub 

• Metric for success: Standardization/certification, 

peer/community acceptance & application, USACE 

guidance/training, sustainable reimbursable program 



FY12 FRM Strategic Themes 

• Improve FRM and water control 

infrastructure resiliency and reliability 

• Risk and uncertainty frameworks for 

project alternatives evaluation and 

performance assessment 

• Comprehensive and multidisciplinary 

management measures for watersheds 

• Optimized management of coastal and 

estuarine resources 

• Effective disaster preparation, response & 

recovery 



Risk and Uncertainty Frameworks 

for Project Alternatives Analysis 

Belvidere, Il 

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 

Time (min) 

Improve Corps’ planning, design and formulation capability through 

advanced software that integrates engineering computations with FRM 

analysis tools. Software is designed to enhance evaluation and 

comparison of project alternatives in a risk and uncertainty framework 

Flow (cms) 

140 

120 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

No Wetlands 

Wetlands 1 

Wetlands 2 

Wetland 3 

Wetland 4 



Risk & Uncertainty/Alternatives 

Analysis Work Units 

• Tool development 

► HEC-WAT/FRA 

► HEC-FIA 

► Beach-fx 

► CSTORM-DB/VS 

► H&H Models (GSSHA, HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS) 

• Capability/guidance development 

► Updated coastal damage functions 

► Coastal project damages prevented methodology 



HEC-WAT/FRA 

St. Paul Levee Pilot Study 



HEC-Flood Impact Analysis (FIA) 

• Planning tool that calculates economic damages 

and agricultural losses with uncertainty and 

estimates life loss for single events 

• FIA is not a hydraulic model 

• Economic Losses 

► Structure and Contents 

► Business interruption losses 

► Agricultural damages 

• Life Risk 

► Simplified LIFESim method 


• Population at Risk 

• % warned and mobilized 

• % lost life 


CSTORM-DB/VS 

USACE KML and 

Data Servers 

CSTORM-VS Web App with 

Google Earth Plug-In 

External KML and 

Data Servers 

Desktop PC w/ 

Google Earth 

CSTORM-DB Storm Server 

Coastal Storm HDF5 Archive 

Coastal Storm 

Database 

CSTORM-MS 

SMS 



Optimize Management of Coastal 

and Estuarine Resources 

Provide USACE and its partners and stakeholders the framework and 

analytical tools to balance human development activities with natural 

system requirements in a sustainable manner through regional 

management of coastal and estuarine water and sediment resources 



Optimize Management of Coastal and 

Estuarine Resources – Work Units 


► CSTORM-MS – coupled wave, hydrodynamics and 

sediment transport simulation capability 

► AdH – Adaptive Hydraulics hydrodynamic simulation 

• Full 3D baroclinic simulation capability 

• 2D/3D combined grid capability 

• SEDLIB fine grain and cohesive sediment simulation library 

• Critical physical process research 

► Storm surge wave energy dissipation thru vegetation 

simulation 

► Unstructured wave model simulation 



CSTORM-MS 

Application of high-resolution, highly skilled numerical models in a 

tightly integrated modeling system with user friendly interfaces 

ADH * 

+ 

C2SHORE 

Provides for a robust, standardized approach to establishing the risk 

of coastal communities to future occurrences of storm events 



3D AdH – Galveston Bay 



Watershed Management 

Provide capability to Districts and stakeholders to conduct holistic studies 

on watersheds, rivers, reservoirs and estuaries for multidisciplinary water 

resources management. Capability includes interoperable hydrology, 

hydraulics, sediment and material transport and ecologic processes 



Watershed Management – Work Units 

• Reservoir Sedimentation Database 

► Joint effort with USGS & USBR 


► GSSHA – Physics-based, fully distributed hydrologic 

model 

• Improved snow melt, automated calibration and fine scale 

simulation capability 

► HEC-HMS – Lumped parameter hydrologic model 

• Surface erosion capability 

► HEC-RAS – 1D steady-unsteady flow simulation 

• Urban area, reservoir slucing/flushing and unsteady flow 

simulation improvements 



GSSHA Modeling Capabilities 

Evapotranspiration 

Erosion 

Stream Network 

Water Quality 

Overland Flow 

Infiltration 

Storm and Tile 

Drain Networks 


Groundwater 

Reservoirs and 

Detention Basins 

Wetlands 


Hurricane Irene GSSHA Model 



• Both GSSHA and 

ADCIRC models were 

used to model the storm 

impacts 

• GSSHA modeled the 

inland surge and includes 

rainfall. More physically 

detailed than, e.g. 

SLOSH 

• ADCIRC models the 

storm surge depth from 

the wind, bathymetry, etc. 

Hurricane Irene 



GSSHA Model Results 

One ADCIRC and two GSSHA models were stood up 

over three days. The two GSSHA models, the Greater 

New York/New Jersey model and the Long Island 

model, are two of the largest GSSHA models stood 

up to date 



Advisory 25 Results 

NWS hurricane track advisories were used to feed the 

ADCIRC model, and NWS precipitation forecasts and the 

ADCIRC results to feed the GSSHA model. These results 

are from Advisory 25 



Advisory 25 vs. Advisory 29 

Storm Surge 

The GSSHA model was run 

with Advisory 25 results. 

Advisory 29 results show 

approximately 1m less 

storm surge than earlier 

predicted 



Restaurant Felix @ Grand and West 

Broadway 

Advisory 25 GSSHA 

Model Results: 

1.32m 

Estimated actual 

flooding: 0.3 – 0.4m 



Improve Infrastructure Resiliency & 

Reliability 

Identify near term opportunities for gaining new 

capability and longer term science-based 

initiatives to make greater strides in improving 

the condition and functioning of infrastructure. 

Monitoring, Sensing, and Testing of 

Earthen Structures 

I-Wall Analysis 

Airborne 

Satellite 

Sources of Data 

for Performance 

Monitoring and 

Observation 

Ground -based 

Waterborne 

Corps_I-Wall example of I-Wall 

in various soil types 

Woody Vegetation on Levees 

Embankment and Foundation Seepage & 

Piping for Risk Based Decision-Making 

Woody Vegetation on 

Levees, New Orleans, LA 

Piping Mechanisms 



Effective Disaster Preparation, 

Response & Recovery 

• MICA – Mobile Information Collector Application 

• Storm vulnerability prediction tool for expedient 

inundation prediction 



Mobile Apps for Disaster Response 


Blue Roof and Rapid Temporary Repair 

Mission 

In 2010 ERDC was tasked by HQ EOC to 

develop an innovative solution for replacing 

clipboards with an interactive near-real time 

system for data tracking. From the 

homeowner request for assistance all the 

way to the final inspection of repairs the data 

is 100% digital with no paper forms. 

Mobile Information Collection Application 

(MICA) 

In 2011 ERDC was tasked by HQ Emergency 

Operations Center (EOC) to develop an 

innovative solution for replacing current 

manual system with an interactive near-real 

time system for data collection of flood 

fighting activities. Current processes are 

antiquated and sector leaders asked for help 

to develop a better way. 


Data Collection – The Problem 

•Field Personnel are 

dispatched with clipboards, 

notebooks, cameras, GPS, 

field cell phones and paper 

forms – Over $500 worth of 

equipment 

•Cameras are used to take 

pictures, GPS is used to 

capture coordinates to be 

written down on paper 

forms. If the item needs to 

be elevated in priority they 

call command center 

•Evenings are spent typing 

in the data to Enterprise 

system from paper forms, 

getting pictures off camera 

and matching them up to 

paper forms records in 

SharePoint 



MICA Approach 



MICA User Interface 

Field Personnel have a very intuitive screen for 

capturing field photos and videos 



Mobile Data Collection Kit 

•60 Android Smartphones 

in ready-to-go kit, easily 

replaceable - $150 each 

•In addition to computer 

applications, they can 

make calls, email and text 

message for field 

communications 

•Platform to support 

multiple applications at 

once 

•Voice Recognition, 

internet research, maps, 

calculators, engineering 

applications 



2011 Flood Fight – MICA Data Collection 

Team members during their 

levee walks took photos, 

videos, and notes of 

sandboils, seepage, 

pumping efforts, and any 

other points of interest to 

send back to command 

center. 



MICA – 2011 Flood Fight 

Data from phones 

started popping up on 

dashboard within 30 

minutes of teams 

deploying. Points as 

far north as Jackson, 

TN, down to Houma, 

LA 



MICA 

• 2012 USACE Innovation of the Year award winner 

• Endorsements received from: 

► COL Edward R. Fleming, Commander, New Orleans District 

► COL Bob Ruch, Commander, Omaha District 

► COL Tony Hofmann, Commander, Kansas City District 

► John Bertino, Chief, Engineering Division - Omaha District 

► Cory Williams, Chief, Geotechnical Engineering Branch - Memphis 

District 

► Kimberly S. Thomas, Chief, Readiness Branch - Omaha District 

► Chief, Readiness Contingency Operations - Northwest Division 

► Jonathan Pennington, Chief, Office of Emergency Management - 

Vicksburg District 

► Michael Krehely, Emergency Management, New Orleans District 

► Lamar Jenkins, Mission Manager, Debris Removal - Minot, ND 



Knowledge Hub 

• https://knowledge.usace.army.mil 



Discussion 

• Where do you see a need for R&D efforts??? 

Please share with us your ideas for tool/capability 

improvements… 



http://operations.usace.army.mil/flood.cfm

Flood and Coastal Storm Damage Reduction R&D Program Overview

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