Impact of the Duration of Coastal Flooding on Infrastructure

Abstract

Coastal communities are experiencing a gradual increase in flooding. Studies focus on the extent and depth of how coastal flooding will change as sea levels rise and impacts on infrastructure needed for risk assessments. However, there is limited information on how the duration of coastal flooding will change; specifically, in a format needed to support risk assessments. Therefore, the objective of this article is to highlight the need for annual exceedance probability curves by examining potential impacts on infrastructure in the city of Norfolk, Virginia. The analysis translates tide data to simulate stationarity and combines it with increments of rising sea levels to represent future tide elevations. The authors use a Poisson probability distribution to calculate flood duration exceedance levels for a specified threshold level and estimate how durations and probabilities could change over time. The article concludes with an assessment of how increasing flood durations can impact infrastructure systems.