The utilization of physically based models and GIS techniques for comprehensive risk assessment of storm surge: A case study of Huizhou

Abstract

Quantitative analyses of storm surge risk, which are mostly focused on physical vulnerability, have been widely used to help coastal communities mitigate impacts and damage. Such assessments, however, overlook the social aspect of vulnerability in storm surge risk. By considering both the community’s social vulnerability and buildings’ physical vulnerability, this study proposed a methodology that incorporates social vulnerability into the framework for making quantitative risk assessments of storm surge using a coupled hydrodynamic and wave model, Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques, and the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method. The coastal area of Huizhou was chosen as the case study due to its high concentration of oil and gas infrastructure in China’s southern Guangdong Province. By combining hazard, exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability, it was possible to explore the effect of social vulnerability on the physical vulnerability-based risk assessment of storm surge and determine the overall risk level. First, the Gumbel distribution was utilized to establish five representative and plausible hypothetical typhoon events with different return periods (10, 20, 50, 100, and 1000 years) for the study area. Then, using the well-validated fully-coupled model, the Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) model and the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model, storm surge simulations for defined return periods were run, and the geographical distribution of the maximum surge elevations displayed on a GIS platform was used to assess hazard levels. In terms of the physical aspect, the depth-damage functions for buildings were established to estimate direct economic losses and assign risk levels accordingly. For the social vulnerability of a community, a composite score was computed using the PCA method by combining and aggregating indicators representing various characteristics of the social group. The results show that the overall risk level, taking into account both social vulnerability and physical vulnerability, has decreased on average. It suggests that social vulnerability-based risk assessment may account for a significant portion of the overall risk assessment, which is frequently overlooked in traditional storm surge risk assessment. Additionally, the comprehensive and precise risk maps can assist local policymakers in identifying areas at different risk levels and developing evacuation plans, thereby minimizing potential losses, especially in high-risk areas.

Assessing Climate and Human Activity Effects on Hypersaline Lake Ecosystem: Case Study of Saki Lake, Crimea

“…Therefore, it is an important problem to create and develop the methods for real-time monitoring of water quality. Monitoring systems which allow evaluating water quality in lakes in real time are required [23,54,55]. In addition, these monitoring systems in salt lakes can obtain information of the peculiarities of peloids formation and the factors that influence on these processes, as well as the carbon storage potential above and below bottom, dead organisms, microbial activity, sources and fluctuations of organic matter fluxes.…”

“…For these purposes, the usual hydrochemical methods are used. However, at present, the novel technique for monitoring is developing, including the telemetric autonomous systems, which allows obtaining information in the online regime [22,23].…”

An investigation on the effects of increasing maximum wind speed of tropical cyclones on the return periods of water levels in the sea area of the Yangtze River Delta

“…2008; Dietrich et al, 2011). The ADCIRC model has been widely used in the numerical studies on storm surge processes around the world (e.g., Parker et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2020;Shankar and Behera, 2021;Pan et al, 2022b;Wang et al, 2022).…”

Coastal Inundation Hazard Assessment in Australian Tropical Cyclone Prone Regions

“…Coastal inundation is one of the main risks for coastal regions worldwide; its main cause being storm surges, a hazard often associated with tropical cyclone (TC) events [1][2][3][4]. TC-prone regions of Australia have experienced some of the most extreme TC events in the country [1], with coastal inundation being one of the main contributors to the damage and losses caused by flooding [5]. In the event of a TC, these elevated water levels can last several hours before and after TC landfall; however, the storm surge magnitude is mostly dependent on wind speeds [6], which are influenced by TC characteristics such as their intensity, speed, and structure [1].…”