Malcolm L. Spaulding
Professor Emeritus, Ocean Engineering University of Rhode Island
Narragansett, RI 02881
USACE Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory(CHL) Data Infrastructure Workshop
January 23, 2014
Overview of Presentation
Background
North Atlantic Comprehensive Study (Army Eng) NERACOOS Supported Northeast Coastal Ocean
Forecasting System (NECOFS)
Vision for STORM TOOLS
Web based architecture and tools
Benefits of approach and web based tools
Experience in implementation of cloud based coastal forecasting system for Dubai
Way forward: Demonstration Project- RI coast, jointly
supported by NOAA and USACE; validation experiment at USACE Duck, NC facility
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study.
The goals of the two year, $19 m, study (2013-2015) are to (1) provide strategies to reduce risk to which vulnerable
coastal populations are subject, and
(2) promote coastal resilient communities to ensure a sustainable and robust coastal landscape system, considering future sea level rise and climate change scenarios,
(3) to reduce risk to vulnerable population, property, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
US Army Engineers county level
areas impacted by Sandy
Last mile problem
North Atlantic Comprehensive Coastal Study provides quality state of art predictions along the coast but the resolution is not sufficient for local studies
CSTORM-MS program anticipates that this level of
analysis will be a local responsibility, funded for a specific project or activity.
Given the sophistication of the tools and the talent
required to make use of them, the cost of analysis is likely to be significant and a barrier to use
Last Mile : Link CSTORM or similar to local studies
Development of An Inundation Forecast System for Northeast Coastal Regions
Robert C Beardsley
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543
MIT May 29, 2013
Changsheng Chen
University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, New Bedford, MA 02744
Develop an “end –to-end” inundation model system for northeastern coastal regions and demonstrate its forecast capability for extra-tropical nor’easter storm and hurricane-induced coastal flooding.
Acknowledgement: NERACOOS for the development and improvement of NECOFS and the MIT Sea Grant for the development of the Massachusetts inundation system.
Northeast Coastal Ocean Forecast System (NECOFS)
05/29/2013-MIT
Coastal FVCOM (up to 10 m)
Surface Wave Model (FVCOM-SWAVE) Local Weather Model (WRF)
North American Meso-scale (NAM) Weather Model
Satellite SST Buoy Winds Insolation
Satellite SST, SSH Buoy or Survey
T,S,U,V River discharges
Heat Flux Wind Stress P-E U,V
BC’s
assimilation Regional FVCOM
(GOM-FVCOM: 0.3-15 km) Global-FVCOM
tides, currents, T and S)
Groundwater
U,V , Waves Langmuir Cells
Inundation Model
Storm Surge (hurricanes, Nor’easter)
Wind Stress
Nested
Products:
Weather: winds, air temperature, air humidity, air pressure, heat flux, E-P Oceans: sea level, currents, T, S, wave heights, wave frequencies, icing Lands: inundation areas
Existing Models NECOFS
KEY
Data
To Be Developed Products
Global-FVCOM
(2-50 km) GoM-FVCOM (0.3-15 km)
Mass Coastal FVCOM (10 m-5 km)
Nested Nested
Nested
Enlarged view
Scituate, MA (up to 10 m) Hampton, NH (up to 10 m)
Scituate, MA The Test Site:
44013
Tide gauge station
MIT May 29, 2013
Maps of surface wave height (m) and direction (arrows) at Dec. 27 08 GMT
MIT May 29, 2013
No waves With waves
Mass Bay (up to 10 m) Enlarged view
Boston Harbor Inundation Domains
High resolution FVCOM grid for eastern Long Island and Block Island Sounds
(with coastal flooding)
Vision for STORM TOOLS
Develop a system that provides access to a suite of coastal planning tools (numerical models et al) available as a web service that allows wide spread accessibility and
applicability at high resolution to user selected coastal areas of interest.
Tools to predict winds, waves, and currents with and
without sea level rise. The models would link directly to the hindcast fields provided at the CSTORM web site or local systems (e.g. NECOFS).
The models and associated data bases would reside on the web server site and run remotely via the web. The system could be hosted by NOAA CSC, IOOS RA, Army Corp, et al or on the cloud.
Web Accessible Tools
Hurricane and storm wind and pressure fields
Integrated storm surge and wave models NOAA SLOSH
ADCIRC and SWAN (unstructured grid) FVCOM and SWAN (unstructured grid) STWAVES (near shore waves)
CHAMP and WHAFIS
Sea Level Rise Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM)
Other emerging model systems
NOAA Digital Coast
Approach: Bring the geospatial and coastal
management communities together
Outcome: A constituent-
driven, integrated, enabling platform supporting coastal resource
management that is used
The Digital Coast in Action:
Facilitating Use and Application
DISCOVER Information
on the C- CAP land cover data
set on the Digital Coast
website
DOWNLOAD Land cover data for your community via
the Data Access Viewer
MAP Develop mash-ups with ESRI and OGC map services
ANALYZE Change in your county
with the Land Cover
Atlas
LEARN From data
experts through recorded webinars
SHARE Outcomes with others
though Stories in the
Field
DATA INFORMATION ACTION
http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digital
Benefits of the approach
•Universal access, with link to CSTORM-MS or NECOFS data.
•Substantial leverage of results from the North Atlantic
Comprehensive Study to assist local resilience analysis and planning.
•Applicable to any area, at user defined resolution.
•Ability to develop study area grids at a variety of locations and differing resolutions.
•Allows non specialist to readily access model results and to perform simple simulations. Allows professional to access state of the art simulation tools that have been validated by the government and accepted in the technical community.
•Reduce the cost and time to perform sophisticated
analyses for storm surge and coastal sea level rise planning
Benefits of using the web version
Quick access from anywhere within application availability zone (VPN, etc)
Capable of adding additional users as projects grow
Robust for critical emergency response
No need for upgrades or patches on local PCs
High flexibility for data integration and service based connections
No platform compatibility issues as operating systems change. Compliant with most web browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
Publish scenarios and metocean data to mobile devices to distribute results
Arabian Gulf Operational Forecasting System HPC Cloud Infrastructure Case Study
Operational Daily Forecast System
WRF (GFS initialization)
parent grid covers entire Arabian Gulf region with high resolution nest over Dubai
ROMS (initialized with previous forecast field or climatology)
parent grid covers entire Arabian Gulf region with high resolution nest over Dubai
SWAN (WW3 initialization)
unstructured grid covers entire Arabian Gulf region
Forecast out to 5 days
0Z and/or 12Z initialization
Limited infrastructure budget
large cluster not possible
Example of downscaling winds (GFS
to WRF nest)
OFS Timings (Model Server)
2010 2011 2013 2013 2014
Switch to Cloud $600/month For 2 runs/day:
00Z and 12Z
Results of Cloud Implementation
Runtime reduced from 7+ hours to less than 3 hours
Forecast data available sooner
Additional grids can be accommodated by reclaimed time
Costs reduced by reducing runtime (pay by hour of utilization)
Ability to scale by demand
All models compiled with MPI support, can spin up additional nodes for speed
Development and staging environments available
Exact operational environment can be duplicated
Only pay for runtime associated with development. Once development or debugging complete, node is terminated. No ongoing costs.
Allows for cost-effective model experimentation with configuration parameters and datasets
Continually upgrading environment
End of 2013 saw AWS(cloud) lower price (per hour) of HPC node as well as increase performance. Both price per hour and runtime dropped (from 5 hours to 3 hours).
No hardware obsolescence
Summary
Web based strategy to support the use of state of the art tools for local coastal resilience analysis and
planning for storms and sea level rise.
Leverage extensive, on-going work in coastal
inundation modeling (Army Corp Engineers, NOAA IOOS, FEMA, etc).
Cloud based strategy dramatically increases access and lowers cost to employ state of the art modeling.
Provides an affordable solution to the last mile problem
Next Step: Demonstration Project
Application to Misquamicut Beach, Westerly, RI
Management Question
How will the area impacted by the once in hundred
year storm surge (and associated waves) be changed in next 25 yrs if sea level rise of 1 m and projected rates of coastal erosion are assumed ?
What critical infrastructure will be impacted?
How would various mitigation strategies impact the areas that are flooded?
