Projecting risk of highway flooding due to sea level rise

Like most coastal U.S. states, California’s shoreline communities and ecosystems have been exposed to flooding related to sea level rise and storms, which jeopardize their persistence. In particular, shoreline transportation is both especially vulnerable in certain places to flooding and failure and, because it is part of a continuously used network with little redundancy, transfers its vulnerability to regional transportation networks. Forward-projected inundation/flooding risk is typically modeled at coarse spatial and temporal scales, which are useful at regional and decadal scales, but less useful for coastal managers and flood responders. This project will improve assessment of both overall probability and short-term forecasts for specific locations in the San Francisco Bay that are vulnerable to flooding associated with sea level rise. Locations will be chosen in consultation with coastal managers (optionally may include an open-coast location). The researchers will develop probability assessment and forecasts through developing data-based, site-specific, model-independent approaches, which can be compared with and help to improve regional models of coastal flooding (e.g., CoSMoS). They will collect water level data across fine-scale arrays at fluvial-bay junctures in Sonoma and Marin Counties. One analysis will deconstruct water level records into multiple quasi-independent signals, which can be better predicted and recombined to produce probability of extreme events and also can be combined to produce short-term forecasts during a flooding event based on predicted wind, rain, and tide. Another analysis will focus on the probability of co-occurrence of fluvial and sea level flooding by resolving temporal relationships between forcing due to rain/run-off and wind/wave surges during storms. In addition, real-time data will be available to first responders at critical locations during a flooding event. This is a pilot project that could be replicated at many other vulnerable locations around the San Francisco Bay and elsewhere.

• Record URL:
  https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/project/projecting-risk-highway-flooding-due-sea-level-rise

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $141905
• Contract Numbers:

  Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 035

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  California Department of Transportation

  1227 O Street
  Sacramento, CA  United States  95843
• Managing Organizations:

  University of California, Davis

  Institute of Transportation Studies
  Davis, CA  United States  95616

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 
• Project Managers:

  Iacobucci, Lauren

• Performing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of California, Davis

  Institute of Transportation Studies
  Davis, CA  United States  95616
• Principal Investigators:

  Largier, John

  Shilling, Fraser

• Start Date: 20200101
• Expected Completion Date: 20220630
• Actual Completion Date: 20230331
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Disaster resilience; Floods; Forecasting; Highway design; Measuring instruments; Risk assessment; Sea level; Statistical analysis; Street closure
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Hydraulics and Hydrology; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01717762
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Sustainable Transportation
• Contract Numbers: Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 035
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 20 2019 3:58PM