Swims Hawaii Hurricane Wave, Surge, and Runup Inundation Fast Forecasting Tool

Abstract

The Surge and Wave Island Modeling Studies (SWIMS) fast forecasting tool employs high-resolution, high-fidelity wave and surge models to simulate hundreds of hurricanes for the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The simulations are run on High-Performance Computers and results are stored in a database of storm response. The database is then used to forecast potential waves, surge, and inundation very quickly when a storm is approaching Hawaii by employing response-surface surrogate modeling. The hurricanes are characterized by five parameters: landfall location, angle of approach, central pressure, forward speed, and radius of maximum winds. The fast forecasting system can produce the storm response for deterministic assessment or probabilistic assessment based on the error cone of possible tracks and error characteristics of the forecasts. The high-fidelity simulation requires a few thousand computational hours and the surrogate model requires a couple of seconds for predicting each hurricane response.