Preliminary Simulations for Assessing Adaptation affect on Storm Surge Flooding, in Enhancing Coastal Resilience through Participatory Transformation of Barrier Islands

Coastal communities in North Carolina are vulnerable to storm surge flooding. Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands are two narrow, low-lying barrier islands in the southern Outer Banks where during storms, communities can experience over 2 meters of surge flooding. Current adaptations to reduce storm surge, such as sandbagging, are short term and localized. With increased sea level rise and the increasing intensity and frequency of tropical systems, communities may experience more flood hazards and need to plan for flood resiliency. Using ADCIRC+SWAN, we can implement community-wide large-scale adaptations to storm surge flooding and test scenarios under present day and future sea level rise to understand the hydrodynamic effect of adaptations on storm surge flooding. In order to represent adaptation features at the property parcel scale in ADCIRC+SWAN, we developed a high-resolution mesh tailored to the complex coastal morphology of Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands. The preliminary adaptation, creating an inlet on Hatteras Island, is implemented by changing the elevation of mesh nodes to match historical breach bathymetries.