Extreme storm surges and waves and vulnerability of coastal bridges in New York City metropolitan region: an assessment based on Hurricane Sandy

Abstract

Hurricane Sandy struck the New York metropolitan area in October 2012, becoming the second-costliest cyclone in the nation since 1900, and it serves as a valuable basis for investigating future extreme hurricane events in the area. This paper presents a hindcast study of storm surges and waves along the coast of the Mid-Atlantic Bight region during Hurricane Sandy using the FVCOM-SWAVE system, and its simulation results match observed data at a number of stations along the coastline. Then, as potential future scenarios, surges and waves in this region are predicted in synthetic hurricanes based on Hurricane Sandy’s parameters in association with sea-level rise in 50 and 100 years as well as with eight paths perturbed from that of Sandy. The prediction indicates that such surges and waves exhibit complex behaviors, and they can be much stronger than those during Hurricane Sandy. Finally, an assessment of hydraulic vulnerability is made for all coastal bridges in the New Jersey and New York region. It shows that hydrodynamic load and scour depth at some bridges may be worse in certain scenarios than those during Superstorm Sandy, while the probability of structural failure is small for the majority of them.