The COASTAL Act was signed into law on July 6, 2012, with the purpose of the lowering costs to FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) by better discerning wind versus water damage in the case of “indeterminate losses;” that is, where little tangible evidence beyond a building’s foundation (“slab”) remains for the proper adjustment of insurance claims for homes totally destroyed by a tropical cyclone. The COASTAL Act requires NOAA to produce detailed “post-storm assessments” in the aftermath of a damaging tropical cyclone that strikes the U.S. or its territories. Using output from a hindcast model (termed the “Named Storm Event Model” (NSEM) by the Act), the assessments will indicate the strength and timing of damaging winds and water at a given location in the area impacted by the tropical cyclone.
University of Oklahoma: “Steps Towards Automating River Connections and Addressing Precipitation in ADCIRC”
University of Notre Dame: “Grid Development and Automated Grid Generation for River Connections”
Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences: “Implementing SCHISM Model to Improve Integrated Water Modeling Projects”
The Costal Ocean Modeling Testbed (COMT) serves as a conduit between the federal operational and research communities and allows sharing of numerical models, observations and software tools. The COMT supports integration, comparison, scientific analyses and archiving of data and model output needed to elucidate, prioritize, and resolve federal and regional operational coastal ocean issues associated with a range of existing and emerging coastal oceanic, hydrologic, and ecological models. The Testbed has enabled significant community building (within the modeling community as well as enhancing academic and federal operational relations) which has dramatically improved model development.
Virginia Institute of Marine Science: “Chesapeake Bay Environmental Forecasting System”
University of Washington: “LiveOcean Model Enhancement”
University of Notre Dame: “Multi-Physics Water Level Modeling From Global to Meter Scales”
State University of New Jersey: “Data Assimilation Algorithms for U.S West and East Coast OFS”
Louisiana State University: “Coupled Ocean Modeling Testbed Platform”
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: "Operational Forecast System for the Salish Sea"
The Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI) ensures continuous, cost effective development and transition of the latest scientific and technological advancements into NWS operations. JTTI funds matured projects that can transition to operations within 3-5 years. JTTI priority areas include but are not limited to: advancing data assimilation of new observations and data assimilation techniques; developing, testing and evaluating artificial intelligence/machine learning methods; improving water prediction capabilities through enhancements to National Water Model; improving forecasts of extreme weather and high impact weather events; and utilizing social and behavioral science to communicate forecast uncertainty.
The Ocean Technology Transition (OTT) program sponsors the transition of emerging marine observing technologies, for which there is an existing operational requirement and a demonstrated commitment to integration and use by the ocean observing community, to operational mode.
AOOS/Prince William Sound Science Center: Intuitive Model-Driven Marine Particle Tracking and Visualization Tools for Coastal Incident Reponse, Maritime Domain Awareness and Research Applications
Rutgers University and MARACOOS: "Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Modeling Framework for the Mid-Atlantic Bight: WRF and ROMS"
SECOORA: "Developing an Integrated Coastal Water Predictive Capability to Promote Resilience to Water Risks"
NOAA Office of Coast Survey: "Pre-Operational HSOFS Wave-Surge Coupling"
NOAA Office of Water Prediction: "Forecast Coupling Between Freshwater and Saltwater Models"
The Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) is a dynamic modeling approach that has been developed by the United States Geological Survey in order to allow more detailed predictions of coastal flooding due to both future sea-level rise and storms integrated with long-term coastal evolution (i.e., beach changes and cliff/bluff retreat) over large geographic areas (100s of kilometers). CoSMoS models all the relevant physics of a coastal storm (e.g., tides, waves, and storm surge), which are then scaled down to local flood projections for use in community-level coastal planning and decision-making. CoSMoS uses wind and pressure from global climate models to project coastal storms under changing climatic conditions during the 21st century.
