Advancing Prediction of Flooding, Morphological Change, and Damage from Hurricanes: The NOPP Hurricane Coastal Impacts Initiative

Abstract Hurricanes can cause devastating coastal impacts including flooding, erosion, and infrastructure damage. While operational forecasting systems skillfully predict regional storm surge, a capability gap remains in forecasting infrastructure-scale impacts from hurricanes – specifically localized breaching, building damage, and morphological change. The National Oceanographic Partnership Program Hurricane Coastal Impacts (NHCI) project brought together nine research teams over four years (2021–2024) to assess whether such predictions could be achieved in a forecasting framework. The project provided consistent atmospheric forcing to three independent coastal modeling systems (CoSMoS, COAWST, ADCIRC), deployed coordinated observations during six hurricanes, and evaluated predictions against ground truth. Outcomes from these coordinated efforts include high density observation datasets from offshore to onshore, accurate local flood depth predictions, simulation of the catastrophic breaching of Florida’s Sanibel Causeway islands using meteorological forecasts from two days before Hurricane Ian’s landfall, and estimates of building damage due to the storm. The project demonstrated a real-time forecasting framework for these impacts and the value of a multi-year collaborative effort enabling iterative improvement on observational strategies and model configurations necessary for a real-time workflow. We review both the demonstrated capabilities and investments that could advance infrastructure-scale coastal damage prediction from research demonstration toward operational application.

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Publication Details

Journal
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Published
2026-11-10
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-25-0233.1
Primary Topic
Coastal and Marine Dynamics
Type
article
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article

Advancing Prediction of Flooding, Morphological Change, and Damage from Hurricanes: The NOPP Hurricane Coastal Impacts Initiative

Dean B. Gesch, Steven Beninati, Yanda Ou, Roland Romeiser et al.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Coastal and Marine Dynamics
article

Advancing Prediction of Flooding, Morphological Change, and Damage from Hurricanes: The NOPP Hurricane Coastal Impacts Initiative

Dean B. Gesch, Steven Beninati, Yanda Ou, Roland Romeiser, Arthriya Subgranon, Gijs de Boer, Roel de Goede, Dano Roelvink, Michael J. Caruso, Hans C. Graber, Isabel Houghton, Joel Casey Dietrich, Nashid Mumtaz, Angelos Papandreou, Jim Thomson, Pieter Bart Smit, Kees Nederhoff, Maitane Olabarrieta, Jessica Gorski, Brian Blanton, Luca Centurioni, Matthew V. Bilskie, Christopher R. Sherwood, Ap R. Van Dongeren, Maarten van Ormondt, Joseph B. Zambon, Ellen Quataert, Mehrshad Amini, Zach Cobell, Shintaro Bunya, Jacob R. Davis, Elias Hunter, Ruoying He, Stephen J. Frasier, Mark Carson, James D. Doyle, Tetsu Hara, Isaac Ginis, Martha Schönau, Panagiotis Athanasiou, Zuo George Xue, Jon Moskaitis, Muhamad Farid Geonova, Emma Manzella, Daniel Cox, Richard Luettich, Sebastiao Figueira, John Warner, Nahruma Pieu, Jennifer Brown, Steven P. Klepac
article en

Abstract

Abstract Hurricanes can cause devastating coastal impacts including flooding, erosion, and infrastructure damage. While operational forecasting systems skillfully predict regional storm surge, a capability gap remains in forecasting infrastructure-scale impacts from hurricanes – specifically localized breaching, building damage, and morphological change. The National Oceanographic Partnership Program Hurricane Coastal Impacts (NHCI) project brought together nine research teams over four years (2021–2024) to assess whether such predictions could be achieved in a forecasting framework. The project provided consistent atmospheric forcing to three independent coastal modeling systems (CoSMoS, COAWST, ADCIRC), deployed coordinated observations during six hurricanes, and evaluated predictions against ground truth. Outcomes from these coordinated efforts include high density observation datasets from offshore to onshore, accurate local flood depth predictions, simulation of the catastrophic breaching of Florida’s Sanibel Causeway islands using meteorological forecasts from two days before Hurricane Ian’s landfall, and estimates of building damage due to the storm. The project demonstrated a real-time forecasting framework for these impacts and the value of a multi-year collaborative effort enabling iterative improvement on observational strategies and model configurations necessary for a real-time workflow. We review both the demonstrated capabilities and investments that could advance infrastructure-scale coastal damage prediction from research demonstration toward operational application.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US), Louisiana State University (US), United States Geological Survey (US), United States Naval Research Laboratory (US), Oregon State University (US), North Carolina State University (US), University of Miami (US), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US), University of Georgia (US), University of Rhode Island (US), Brookhaven National Laboratory (US), University of Washington (US), University of Massachusetts Amherst (US), IHE Delft Institute for Water Education (NL), University of Florida (US), Deltares (NL), University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory (US), Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (US), St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center (US), Sofar Ocean (United States) (US)
Coastal and Marine Dynamics
DOISourceOpenAlex
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