Abstract
STORMTOOLS Coastal Environmental Risk Index (CERI) predicts the coastal flooding damage to individual structures using coastal flooding levels, including the effects of sea level rise (SLR), provided in terms of the base flood elevation (BFE), specifications of the structure of interest (type and first floor elevation) and the associated damage functions from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE), North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study (NACCS). CERI has been applied to selected coastal communities in Rhode Island, including those in Narragansett Bay and along the southern Rhode Island shoreline. Users can access the results of CERI via ArcGIS online at the CERI website. The objective of this effort was to develop, test, distribute, and evaluate a mobile phone application (App) that allows the user to assess the risk from coastal flooding and the associated damage at the individual structure level using the CERI methodology. The App is publicly available and has been developed for both iOS and Android operating systems. Environmental data to support the App, in terms of 100 y flood BFE maps, including the effects of SLR and the selected site grade elevation, are provided in the application by the URI Environmental Data Center (EDC). The user enters the location and type of the structure of interest (residential number of stories, with or without basement, pile supported or commercial building and the first-floor elevation (FFE)) and the desired SLR. The App then calculates the percent structural damage based on the specified environmental conditions and structure specifications. The App can be applied to any structure at any coastal location within the state. The CERI App development project has been guided by an Advisory Board made up of key constituents involved in coastal management and development in the state. The effort included extensive testing of the App by various user groups. The App structure makes it simple and straightforward to transfer to coastal and inland flooded areas in other locations, requiring only the specification of BFEs and grade elevations.
Highlights
The vision for STORMTOOLS is to provide web service access to a suite of coastal planning tools that allows wide-spread accessibly and applicability at a high resolutionJ
One of the side benefits of Coastal Environmental Risk Index (CERI) is that the data necessary to input to the method and generated as part of its application can be used to provide state-of-the-art flooding maps, equivalent to those developed by FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMS), but explicitly including the effects of sea level rise (SLR)
The analysis shows that the percent damage for the 100 y no-SLR case increases with a decrease in first-floor elevation (FFE) and increases if the structure is assumed to have a basement(6B); the former effect is due to the height of the FFE and the latter due to flooding via basement windows
Summary
The vision for STORMTOOLS is to provide web service access to a suite of coastal planning tools (numerical models, etc.) that allows wide-spread accessibly and applicability at a high resolution. One of the side benefits of CERI is that the data necessary to input to the method and generated as part of its application can be used to provide state-of-the-art flooding maps, equivalent to those developed by FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMS), but explicitly including the effects of sea level rise (SLR). ITshsetilwl uinnddedradmeavgeeloepsmtimenattoarndis tsetsiltlinugn,daenrddneovteyloept maveaniltaabnledttoesthtiengp,uabnlidc n[1o5t].yet available to theInpudbislcicu[s1s5in].g the use of CERI with permitting and municipal planning officials and those in suppIonrtdinisgcurossleinsg(etnhgeinueseerso,fbCuEilRdeI rws,iitnhspuerarmnciettianggenatnsd, emtc.u)noicniepaislspuleaonfncinogncoefrfniciwalassatnoddethvoelsoepina spuropdpuocrttitnhgatrporloesvi(deendgianseeenrsse, bouf tihldeerris,kibnysuloracantcieona,greanthtse,rethtca.)nobnyestirsusucteuoref, ctoonacsesirsnt iwn acsomtomduenvieclaotpinag product that provided a sense of the risk by location, rather than by structure, to assist in communicating localized risk to those interested in building on the coastal zone
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