Abstract. The changing climate and anthropogenic activities raise the
likelihood of damage due to compound flood hazards, triggered by the
combined occurrence of extreme precipitation and storm surge during high
tides and exacerbated by sea-level rise (SLR). Risk estimates associated
with these extreme event scenarios are expected to be significantly higher
than estimates derived from a standard evaluation of individual hazards. In
this study, we present case studies of compound flood hazards affecting
critical infrastructure (CI) in coastal Connecticut (USA). We based the
analysis on actual and synthetic (considering future climate conditions for
atmospheric forcing, sea-level rise, and forecasted hurricane tracks)
hurricane events, represented by heavy precipitation and surge combined with
tides and SLR conditions. We used the Hydrologic Engineering Center's River
Analysis System (HEC-RAS), a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model, to simulate
the combined coastal and riverine flooding of selected CI sites. We forced a
distributed hydrological model (CREST-SVAS) with weather analysis data from
the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for the synthetic events
and from the National Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) for the actual
events, to derive the upstream boundary condition (flood wave) of HEC-RAS.
We extracted coastal tide and surge time series for each event from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to use as the
downstream boundary condition of HEC-RAS. The significant outcome of this
study represents the evaluation of changes in flood risk for the CI sites
for the various compound scenarios (under current and future climate
conditions). This approach offers an estimate of the potential impact of
compound hazards relative to the 100-year flood maps produced by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is vital to developing mitigation
strategies. In a broader sense, this study provides a framework for
assessing the risk factors of our modern infrastructure located in
vulnerable coastal areas throughout the world.
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