Projects

Over the past two years, ASA has become involved in mapping the impacts of storm surge flooding.  The effort began in Boston, where the National Environmental Trust (NET) commissioned ASA to map the effects of a 100-year storm surge plus 100 years of sea level rise along the downtown coast.  ASA then mapped the effects of a Category II hurricane storm surge plus 100-years of sea level rise for Miami, Washington DC, and Manhattan.  ASA’s flooding images have been published in Vanity Fair, Surfing Magazine, the Boston Globe, and EPA reports; they have also appeared on CNN.
 
Using a custom ArcObjects tool developed by ASA, flood levels between today’s mean sea level and the final flood can be visualized and animated.  These visualizations can then be exported to GoogleEarth KML files and displayed in Google Earth as static images or animations.  Google Earth’s high resolution orthophotos models provide a realistic depiction of the various coastlines on which to display the flooding predictions.

The visualization process can be further automated by connecting ASA’s GIS tools to a storm surge model.  ASA’s COASTMAP Inundation Module is envisioned as a web based system that connects to various storm surge models using the COASTMAP Environmental Data Server (EDS) and then runs the appropriate inundation model to generate maps of areas at risk to the predicted surge.  These maps can be exported back to the EDS where they are easily distributed to the public via a variety of websites as well as automatically emailed to interested parties such as local planners, emergency workers, and television networks. These maps allow planners to better allocate resources and to publicize the risk to vulnerable areas while allowing the public to be proactive in preparing for flooding.