Overview

The Consumer Option for an Alternative System to Allocate Losses (COASTAL) Act was signed into law on July 6, 2012.  The purpose of the COASTAL Act is to lower 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.  If the assessment results for the location of a specific “slab” case can be certified by NOAA as being greater than 90 percent accurate, those results will be input into a FEMA-managed formula that considers a variety of factors that may have contributed to structural damage.  Based on this formula, FEMA will determine the appropriate loss allocation between wind and water.

The Act further requires NOAA to create a “Coastal Wind and Water Event Database” (CWWED) to provide the public access to “covered data” (the observations collected during the storm to assist with the assessment).  The CWWED will serve as the portal through which the gridded post-storm assessment results and metadata will also be accessed by the public.

 

Process Diagram
 

CONOPS Diagram

COASTAL Act Elements

COASTAL Act Events

• 2020 COASTAL Act Annual Meeting Agenda (September 28-30)
• 2020 COASTAL Act annual meeting group photo

Publications 

• Abdolali, A., van der Westhuysen, A., Ma, Z. Mehra, A., Roland, A. and Moghimi, S. Evaluating the accuracy and uncertainty of atmospheric and wave model hindcasts during severe events using model ensembles. Ocean Dynamics (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-020-01426-9 
• Abdolali, A., Aron Roland, Andre van der Westhuysen, Jessica Meixner, Arun Chawla, Tyler J. Hesser, Jane M. Smith, Mathieu Dutour Sikiric, Large-scale hurricane modeling using domain decomposition parallelization and implicit scheme implemented in WAVEWATCH III wave model, 2020. Coastal Engineering, 157, 103656, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coastaleng.2020.103656
• Bakhtyar, R., Maitaria, K., Velissariou, P., Trimble, B., Mashriqui, H., Moghimi, S.,  Abdolali, A., Van der Westhuysen, A.J., Ma, Z., Clark, E.P. and Flowers, T. (2020). A new 1D/2D Coupled Modeling Approach for a Riverine‐Estuarine System under Storm Events: Application to Delaware River Basin. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 125, e2019JC015822. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JC015822
• Ma, Z.; Liu, B.; Mehra, A.; Abdolali, A.; van der Westhuysen, A.; Moghimi, S.; Vinogradov, S.; Zhang, Z.; Zhu, L.; Wu, K.; Shrestha, R.; Kumar, A.; Tallapragada, V.; Kurkowski, N. Investigating the Impact of High-Resolution Land–Sea Masks on Hurricane Forecasts in HWRF. Atmosphere 2020, 11, 888. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/9/888#cite
• Moghimi, S.; A. Van der Westhuysen, A. Abdolali, E. Myers, S. Vinogradov, Z. Ma, F. Liu, Mehra, A.; Kurkowski, N. Development of an ESMF Based Flexible Coupling Application of ADCIRC and WAVEWATCH III for High Fidelity Coastal Inundation Studies. 2020. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 8, 308, https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8050308
• Moghimi, S., S. Vinogradov, E. Myers, Y. Funakoshi, A.J. Van der Westhuysen, A. Abdolali, Z. Ma, F. Liu. Development of a Flexible Coupling Interface for ADCIRC Model for Coastal Inundation Studies. NOAA technical memorandum, NOS CS 41, 2019, https://doi: doi.org/10.25923/akzc-kc14

Presentations

 The 101st Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society

• Amante, C., K. Stroker, M. Love, M. Stiller, K. Carignan, N. Arcos,   Coastal Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) to Support Storm Surge Inundation Modeling Friday, 13 January 2021, 2:00 - 3:30 ET, Virtual.
• Shrestha, R.,  G. DiMego, A. Mehra, M. Pondeca, Z. Ma, A. Kumar,  Wind analysis for a land falling storm in the coastal region with NCEP’s URMA system Friday, 13 January 2021, 2:00 - 3:30 ET, Virtual.
• Kurkowski, N. M. Huang,  The NOAA COASTAL Act Program Friday, 15 January 2021, 1:10 ET, Virtual. (presentation link)
• Del Greco, S., The COASTAL Act Wind and Water Event Database (CWWED) Friday, 15 January 2021, 1:15 ET, Virtual. (presentation link)
• Kumar, A., NOAA’s Coastal Act: Parcel-Scale Wind Downscaling Modeling and Validation for 2018's Hurricane Florence Friday, 15 January 2021, 1:20 ET, Virtual. (presentation link)
• van der Westhuysen, A., A. Abdolali, S. Moghimi, Z. Ma, M. Myers, High-Resolution Hurricane Hindcasts with a Coupled WAVEWATCH III and ADCIRC Model Friday, 15 January 2021, 1:25 ET, Virtual.
• Abdolali, A., A. Roland, T. Hesser, A. Khalid, A. van der Westhuysen, J. Smith, A. Mehra, S. Moghimi, C. Ferreira, Advances in the Unstructured WAVEWATCH III and Nearshore Physics Friday, 15 January 2021, 1:30 ET, Virtual. (presentation link)
• Dresback, K., C. Szpilka, R. Kolar, E. Myers, S. Moghimi, Resolving Compound Inland-Coastal Flooding Events by Incorporating Precipitation and Inland Hydrology in the Coupled ADCIRC Model System: Implementation and Validation Friday, 15 January 2021, 1:35 ET, Virtual.

   American Geophysical Union 2020 Fall Meeting

• Moghimi, S., E. P. Myers, Y. Funakoshi, J. Calzada, G. N. Seroka, Z. Burnett, P. Velissariou, G. Britzolakis, P. Burke, D. P. Snowden, N. Weston, S. Peeri. OS002-0007 Coastal Ocean Modelling Infrastructure Development at the NOAA National Ocean Service in Support of Disaster Mitigation and Marine Navigation, Monday, 7 December 2020 7:00am ET, Virtual. 
• Poisson, A., A. Abdolali, A. J. Van der Westhuysen, Z. Ma, S. Moghimi, A. Mehra. OS048-03 - Large Scale Unstructured WAVEWATCH III for Hurricane Hindcasts: Offshore and Nearshore Validation. Wednesday, 16 December 2020, 10:08 ET, Virtual.
• Abdolali, A., W. Pringle, A. Roland, OS047-0001 - Assessment of global wave models on unstructured domains. Wednesday, 16 December 2020, 7:00 am ET, Virtual.
• Mashriqui, H., S. Khan, B. Trimble, J. Allen, R. Grout, T. Flowers, A. Abdolali, S. Moghimi, A. J. Van der Westhuysen, E. P Clark, H111-0019 - Complex Numerical Simulation of the U.S. East Coast and Inland Areas using a Coupled Hydrologic, Hydrodynamic and Ocean model: Application to Hurricane Sandy, Friday, 11 December 2020, 7:00 ET, Virtual