Assessing and Planning for the Impacts of Storms, Flooding and Sea Level Rise on Vulnerable Gulf of Mexico Coastal Communities: A White Paper and Program Prospectus

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Assessing and Planning for the Impacts of Storms, Flooding and Sea
Level Rise on Vulnerable Gulf of Mexico Coastal Communities:
A White Paper and Program Prospectus
L.D. Wright1*, C. D’Elia2, J. Draayer1, R. Nichols3, D. Resio4, R. Weiss5, G. Zarillo6, L. Azevedo7, L.
Carnahan8, E. Carabantes9, K. Caruson9, A. Cosby10, S. Dalyander11, J. Dixon7, R. Ersing9, J. Garey7, S.
Graves12, C. Hapke7, S. Howard9, M. Ji9, A. Lesen13, D. Loftis14, M. Luther7, G. Mitchum7, S. Myers7, T.
Ruppert15, L. Thomas9, T. Wahl16, S. Watson17, R. Weisberg7, K. Xu2,
Promoted by the
Coastal and Environmental Research Committee (CERC) of the
Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA)
Christopher D’Elia, Committee Chair
*Corresponding Author/contact: ldwright@bellsouth.net
Washington D.C. April 2020
Cite as: Wright, L.D., D’Elia, C., Draayer, J., Nichols, R., Resio, D., Weiss, R., Zarillo, G. et al. 2020. Assessing
and Planning for the Impacts of Storms, Flooding and Sea Level Rise on Vulnerable Gulf of Mexico
Coastal Communities: A White Paper and Program Prospectus. Washington DC, Southeastern
Universities Research Association. 28 pp
Author/Participant Affiliations:
1. Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA)
2. Louisiana State University, College of the Coast and Environment
3. Marine Information Resource Corporation (MIRC)
4. University of North Florida.
5. Virginia Tech (VT)
6. Florida Institute of Technology (FIT)
7. University of South Florida (USF) - Marine Science
8. Pinellas County / FL Sea Grant
9. USF- Social Sciences
10. Mississippi State University Social Sciences
11. The Water Institute-Baton Rouge
12. University of Alabama at Huntsville - Information Technology
13. Dillard University
14. Virginia Institute of Marine Science/College of William & Mary
15. University of Florida/FL Sea Grant
16. University of Central Florida
17. Baton Rouge Area Foundation
All coauthors listed above participated in one or both of the two planning meetings held at the University of
South Florida, Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses, September 30, 2019 and January 10, 2020. The ideas and
perspectives that they shared underpin this white paper.

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Summary
Since 2014, The Coastal and Environmental Research Committee (CERC) of the
Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) has been promoting a collaborative
initiative focused on coastal resiliency. The overarching goal is to Improve Understanding,
Forecasts and Communication of Future Urban Flooding and Related Socioeconomic Impacts
by Connecting and Facilitating Collaborations Among Physical, Data, Ecosystem and Social
Scientists, Modelers, Policy Makers and Stakeholders. Two recent planning meetings were held
to identify the goals, scope and participants for the next phase of the program. It was agreed at
the first meeting that it is critical to better integrate social sciences, humanities and natural
sciences to adequately understand the social fabrics and to provide a more robust foundation of
community vulnerability to climate and storm induced impacts. It was also concluded that
developing mutually beneficial relationships through stakeholder-engagement activities need to
be promoted. Objective and quantitative risk assessment is critical to prioritizing strategies and
resource allocations and must take account of hazards, exposure and community vulnerability.
Dialogue with policy makers, first responders and the general public should precede the final
selection of predictive models and design of an information-sharing network. It was further
agreed that, to begin, the program should focus on Assessing and Planning for the Impacts of
Storms, Flooding and Sea Level Rise on Vulnerable Gulf of Mexico Coastal Communities.
Following on from Meeting I, Meeting II focused more specifically on identifying the potential
institutional contributors to the program, on the specific activities and services that would be
impacted, on the scope of work to be undertaken and on identifying specific regions or sites to
serve as demonstration projects and locations of future community-wide workshops. Ongoing
programs at several universities focus on various aspects of coastal resilience and were identified
as being likely components of SURA’s collaborative network. Two regions were identified as
likely locations for future demonstrations and virtual (or on-site) community workshops: Region
(1) Tampa Bay Area and north to Cedar Key, Florida and Region (2) centered on Port Fourchon,
Louisiana and extending from Barataria Bay to Houma. Both of these regions contain vulnerable
ports and harbors as well as vulnerable communities in low elevation coastal zones (LECZ). One
conclusion from the second meeting was that assessing impacts to, and planning long-term
resilience strategies for, ports and harbors should be emphasized in addition to LECZs. At the
county level, it is important to consider both the long-term effects of sea level rise and the short-
term effects of storms on communities and wetlands as well as post-storm recovery activities and
hazards to human health. Through this program, we can gain better understanding of the non-
linear couplings among storm surge, hydrology, urban infrastructure, ecosystem dynamics and
humanity. Potential beneficiaries of this initiative include emergency operation centers (EOCs),
policy makers, health officials, planners, port operators and city, county and state officials. The
transdisciplinary, multi-institutional program that we advocate is intended to enable sharing and
integrating information on predicted future demographics and societal vulnerabilities, threats of
flooding, water-borne health hazards, wetlands loss and critical infrastructure functions including
drainage. Success will depend heavily on mutual engagement of stakeholders, policy makers and
scientists to support local and regional adaptive management of coasts.

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Introduction and Background
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 considers risk to depend on
hazards, exposure and vulnerability. Coastal communities in the US and around the world are
challenged by new and increasing hazards. Compound flooding of coastal cities by combined
storm surge and torrential rains has increased over the past century and will likely increase in
coming decades. Vulnerable coastal cities in low-lying and flood-prone areas are increasingly
exposed to floods and to water-borne health hazards that often linger well after the storm
subsides. As explained in a recent article by Viner et al.2, risk is not static but dynamic and
constantly evolving. Risk-informed decision making is crucial, but for the resulting information
to be actionable, it must be effectively and promptly communicated to planners, decision makers
and emergency managers in readily understood terms and formats. Observations and projections
of human and physical factors that affect community vulnerability are essential to evaluate pre-
and post-event conditions, to update baselines, to establish objective model validations and to
support both emergency operations and long-range regional planning. In order to objectively
prioritize communities in the greatest need, it is essential that risk be quantitatively assessed
taking account of all three of the risk factors described by the IPCC.
Planning meetings were held at the University of South Florida-Tampa on September 30,
2019 and University of South Florida-St. Petersburg on January10, 2020 to explore ways that
SURA can facilitate interconnections among, and increase funding for, ongoing and
foreshadowed programs focused on resilience of coastal communities in the Gulf states of
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. At its Fall Meeting in November 2019,
SURA’s Coastal and Environmental Research Committee (CERC) continued its effort to focus
researchers on a big science project that facilitates collaboration among natural and social
sciences to enhance coastal resilience. The intent is to assemble a team to better assess the
vulnerability and resilience of coastal systems subject to changing threats from rising seas,
increased storm frequency and intensity, evolving societal pressures and demographics, land and
wetlands loss, altered river discharge and water quality degradation. Earlier workshops
conducted during 2014 and 2015 established much of the necessary groundwork for this
initiative3,4. Those workshops brought together a diverse community of natural and social
scientists from academia, government and NGOs to identify the priorities, science requirements,
cyber support needs and long-term goals for such an initiative. Many of the ideas developed
during those workshops were reported in, and guided, a SURA-led general reference entitled,
Tomorrow’s Coasts: Complex and Impermanent.5 Subsequently, an internationally focused
White Paper6 was collaboratively written and presented at the OceanObs’19 conference in
Honolulu in September 2019. That white paper highlighted important elements for collaborative
research that would support operators who are addressing coastal resilience issues, worldwide.6
SURA has led past multi institutional programs7 involving modeling and “big-science”.
These programs have been supported by the Office of Naval Research, NOAA and SURA
through its own resources. Scientists and engineers affiliated with SURA continue to highlight
the importance of integrating environmental, engineering, and community resilience to benefit
regions such those on the Gulf of Mexico. Accomplishing a team science project focused on
coastal resilience requires the application of continuing innovations in IT that were introduced
during the SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Predicting (SCOOP) program and the

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assessment of modeling innovations that were implemented during initial development of the
NOAA Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed (COMT) project. These successful programs have
been responsible for making advances in the archival of historic data, exploitation of imagery,
optimal location of in situ sensors, and new approaches to modeling extreme conditions.
SURA’s workshop series and collaborative research projects provide the foundation for a
proposed program to demonstrate research advances that assist planning and risk assessment of
coastal communities and seaports that are threatened by both long-term and event-driven (e.g. by
severe storms) inundation, land loss, water quality degradation and resulting economic declines
in industries such as tourism, fisheries and shipping. SURA’s Coastal team has 15 years of
experience in facilitating the testing and refiniing of numerical models for predicting storm
impacts on coasts. The team is now turning its attention to how such events may impact
socioeconomic aspects of coastal communities and how the communities can better prepare for
and adapt to such events.
To effectively address the rapidly evolving threats, a multi-institutional team must
include specialists in social sciences, physical and geological oceanography, wetlands ecology,
coastal engineering, numerical modeling, data science and geographical information technology.
The team must strive to create an accessible digital system of connectivity that facilitates
integration of social and natural sciences and also provides needed information to stakeholders
including emergency managers and the general public. It is imperative that the team be
supportive of and synergistic with, not competitive with, other coastal resilience initiatives in the
US. Early in the project we plan to conduct demonstration projects focused on two Gulf regions.
One of these regions should be centered on Tampa Bay, Florida but extending north to Cedar
Key and the other centered on Port Fourchon, Louisiana and extending from Barataria Bay to
Houma Louisiana, a region where flooding and land loss have already forced the relocation of
an entire community8 (Isle de Jean Charles).
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Goals and Objectives
The overarching long-term goal of SURA’s Coastal Resilience Program is to Improve
Understanding, Forecasts and Communication of Future Urban Flooding and Related
Socioeconomic Impacts by Connecting and Facilitating Collaborations Among Physical, Data,
Ecosystem and Social Scientists, Modelers, Policy Makers and Stakeholders. The more
focused, shorter term goals for the near future are to Assess and Plan for the Impacts of
Compound Flooding and Sea Level Rise on Vulnerable Gulf of Mexico Coastal Communities,
Wetlands and Ports and Harbors. Various regionally specific to global coastal resilience
programs are already in progress or planned at several of SURA’s member institutions. SURA’s
intent is to enhance, assist and connect ongoing and planned programs centered at SURA’s
member institutions as well as state, county and local centers including Emergency Operations
Centers (EOCs).We intend to build an information exchange network that enables quantitative
risk assessment and information exchange for current and predicted future demographics and
societal vulnerabilities, probabilities and likely depths of flooding, potential water-borne health
hazards and critical infrastructure functions including drainage. We will focus on those factors
that are shared by most coastal communities on the Gulf of Mexico Coast where storm surges are
subject to pronounced amplification and are often accompanied by heavy rains and compound
flooding.

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Predictions of flooding potential will involve limited applications of coupled storm surge
and hydrologic models. We do not intend to explicitly advance new models or to compare
models, but rather to build the framework and capacity for risk assessment and adaptive coastal
management that can collaborate with federal, state, county and local entities to improve
resiliency of Gulf of Mexico coastal communities, ports and harbors. However, the program will
be designed to accommodate new modeling and data technologies as they become available and
to embrace an earth system science approach. The purpose is to lay out a prototype template for
future applications at multiple locations with the understanding that, although every coastal city
or region is unique and there can be no “one size fits all” approach, the Gulf Coast has numerous
common attributes that contribute to regional risks and vulnerabilities. A long-range objective is
to collaboratively build capacity for future research beyond the lifetime of this project. The
multi-institutional team will collaborate to develop quantitative assessments of risk that take
account of predicted hazards, exposure and vulnerability and to create an accessible digital
system of connectivity that facilitates integration of social and natural sciences and provides
needed information to stakeholders including emergency managers and the general public. The
goals of this initiative complement the goals of the International Program Future Earth Coasts,
which are --- “to support sustainability and adaptability to global change in the coastal
zone” (https://www.futureearthcoasts.org).
U.S. Gulf of Mexico Coast
The states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas all have extensive Low
Elevation Coastal Zones (LECZ) bordering the Gulf of Mexico. According to the US Census
Bureau, the greatest coastal population growth between 2000 and 2016 was in Gulf coast
counties which added 3 million people over that period
(https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/coastal-county-population-rises.html). The total
population is currently over 15 million people and most of these people live in vulnerable LECZ
communities. The population is expected to increase by 80% between 2010 and 2050 with the
fastest growth taking place in Florida. The northern Gulf Coast is the heart of the US
petrochemical industry and supports over 4,000 oil and gas platforms. Tourism is the major
industry along Florida’s Gulf Coast. There are also numerous major ports in the region including
Tampa Bay, Mobile, New Orleans, Port Fourchon, Houston and Galveston. Within the three
countries bordering the Gulf of Mexico there are a total of 68 important ports and harbors.
The entire Gulf coast lies in the path of major hurricanes and is also subject to flooding by
torrential rains and rivers. In contrast to most Pacific and many Atlantic coastal regions, low-
lying lands and wetlands extend many miles inland from the present shore. For the range of sea
level rise scenarios by 2050 (0.4- 1.2 m)9 the shores of many Gulf Coast regions could
experience landward transgressions measured in miles. Coastal Louisiana is the most threatened.
The continental shelf fronting the Gulf of Mexico coast is extremely wide and gently
sloping (Fig. 1). While the wide and shallow shelf sea floor attenuates wind generated waves
before they reach the shore, storm surges are significantly amplified. The heights of storm surges
depend strongly on the width and slope of the continental shelf and on the configuration and
irregularity of the shores, bays and crenulations that can amplify or diminish the surge. The
greatest shoaling amplification takes place over wide, shallow and gently sloping shelves and the

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least amplification occurs over narrow, steep shelves(5,Chapt.7). It is primarily because of the wide,
shallow shelves that front the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts that storm surges are much more
consequential there than they are on the Pacific Coast. In addition to surge amplification by
propagation across wide continental shelves, other amplification processes may operate. Among
these, are amplification of surges travelling up funnel-shaped bays or estuaries. For these
reasons, regions like Tampa Bay are much more susceptible to storm surge flooding than is the
coast of southeast Florida (e.g. Miami) which is fronted by an extremely narrow and steep shelf.
However, it should be noted that southeast Florida is more suspectable to “nuisance flooding”
under non-storm, fair-weather conditions due to high water levels induced by slowing of the Gulf
Stream combined with king tides and moderate surges.
The operational storm surge prediction model used by NOAA’s National Weather
Service (NWS) is the 2-dimensioal Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH)
model10. Even though there are numerous more sophisticated and accurate models available and
used by academia and other federal agencies, SLOSH continues to be preferred by the NWS
because of its speed of execution and low computational requirements and because forecasters
are familiar with it. For purposes of long-range emergency planning, assessing evacuation routes
and assessing relative risk of flooding of specific localities, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center
runs SLOSH thousands of time for different hypothetical hurricanes to generate vulnerability
maps of worse case scenarios of flooding. These maps portray the quantities Maximum
Envelopes of Water (MEOWs) and the Maximum of MEOWS (MOMS). Figure 2 shows a map of
MOMs for hypothetical category 5 hurricanes hitting different regions of the Gulf Coast. The
areas colored red are predicted to be inundated to depths of at least 9 feet (~3m) above the
present ground level. Note that this inundation could be expected to extend tens of miles inland
in Louisiana and several miles inland along Florida’s west coast.
Whereas the NWS use of the SLOSH model for operational applications to short-term
forecasts is likely to continue into the foreseeable future, it is known that SLOSH underestimates
surge heights in many cases, particularly on embayed and crenulate coasts. And it neglects
compound flooding involving heavy rain and fluvial flooding. For long-range planning purposes
more accurate and sophisticated models, which already exist, should be run for hypothetical
“extreme case” scenarios and the results made readily accessible via the collaborative network
that we advocate. For long range planning, speed of execution is not a necessity. We discuss the
models later in this white paper.

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Figure 1. The Gulf of Mexico showing the extremely wide continental shelf. This attenuates
short-period wind waves but amplifies storm surge.
Figure 2. National Hurricane Center SLOSH predictions of the “maximum of maximum
envelopes of water” (MOMS) caused by storm surges associated with landfalling Category 5
hurricanes on the central and eastern regions of the Gulf Coast. The red areas could expect
inundation to exceed 9 feet (~3m) above existing ground levels. Levees currently protect areas
shown in black.

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A prominent feature of the Gulf Coast is the extent of wetlands (Fig. 3) which, in some
cases, are the sole protector of coastal communities from invading seas. In some regions, such as
in Florida’s “Big Bend” and Nature Coast brackish marshlands grade almost imperceptibly into
shallow open water bays and, ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico (Fig. 4). In those cases, the coastal
environments progress from open water to tidal flats to salt marsh to transitional salt marsh to
coastal forest (aka “swamp” or “hammock”) yielding an extraordinarily diverse ecosystem in the
aggregate11. In other regions of the Gulf, the wetlands lie behind somewhat protective sandy
barrier islands such as Santa Rosa Island near Pensacola Florida (Fig. 5).
Coastal Louisiana includes the largest wetland in the U.S.A. and one of the largest in the
world. Today, land loss greatly exceeds land creation. As the area of open water increases, so
does exposure to erosive wave action. At the present time, the rate of land loss exceeds 41 km2
(16 mi2) per year12 (or, as popularly stated: “one football field per hour”). In 1969, Hurricane
Camille made land fall as a category 5 storm. Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in
2005 was a weaker Category 3 by the time of landfall. Although it was less intense than Camille,
Hurricane Katrina caused far more damage, loss of life and general devastation in eastern
Louisiana than Camille, primarily because of losses of protective wetlands over the 36-year
period separating the two storms. There are multiple causes of Louisiana’s wetlands loss.
Inundation is one and land subsidence is another. But so is dredging of access canals and
channels for oil and gas development (Fig.6). Clearly, predicting wetlands dynamics must be
considered as a primary factor in evaluating long-term adaptive management strategies for Gulf
Coast communities; it is a central focus of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of
Louisiana13.
Figure 3. Extensive saltmarsh in Florida’s “Big Bend” region.

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Figure 4. Coastal salt marsh on the shores of a shallow bay open to the Gulf of
Mexico on Florida’s Nature Coast.
Figure 5. Santa Rosa Island, a sandy barrier island near Pensacola in west
Florida.

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Figure 6. Dredged access channels in Louisiana coastal wetlands. Photo source: U.S.
Geological Survey Louisiana Coastal Wetlands: A Resource at Risk.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/la-wetlands/
Two Gulf “Case Studies” for Workshops and Demonstration Projects
Two regions were identified as likely locations for demonstrations and community
workshops in the near future: Region (1) Centered on Tampa Bay, Florida and Region (2)
centered on Port Fourchon, Louisiana and extending from Barataria Bay to Houma. Both of these
regions contain vulnerable ports and harbors as well as vulnerable communities in low elevation
coastal zones (LECZ). In later years, once the program has matured, future test case regions may
include Apalachicola Florida, Mobile Bay Alabama, Gulf Port-Biloxi Mississippi and Galveston
Texas.
Region 1. Tampa Bay Area and North to Cedar Key, Florida
The region of central west Florida from Tampa Bay north to Cedar Key (Fig. 7) is a
unique coastal region of pronounced contrasts between the wilderness of the sparsely populated
Nature Coast to heavily urbanized Tampa Bay Region. The total population of the Tampa Bay
Area, which includes the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater is 3.14 million people of
which 14.6% are impoverished14. The poor live mostly in flood prone neighborhoods. In 2018,
61.2% of the population was white, 20% was Hispanic or Latino and 11.4% was Black. The Port
of Tampa is Florida’s largest port in terms of cargo tonnage and is the home port of six major
cruise ship lines. The Port of Tampa, like many other ports, is being impacted by sea level rise
and increased storms15. World Bank16 concludes that Tampa is among the 10 cities most at risk
from climate-change related flooding. The World Bank study ranks the risk and vulnerability in
financial terms rather than in terms of risk to human life or well-being (factors harder to
quantify). However, in terms of potential risk to human life and well-being, Tampa Bay is
considered to be among the most at risk coastal cities in the U.S.

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Figure 7. Map of the Central West Coast of Florida from the Tampa Bay area to Cedar
Key on Florida’s “Nature Coast”.
One of the reasons for Tampa’s greater risk and exposure is that, in addition to storm
surge amplification over the wide continental shelf, the bay itself has a funneling effect that
concentrates surge energy as the surge propagates up the bay. In addition, the continuing loss of
barrier islands is diminishing protection from extreme events17. Figure 8 shows the predicted
surge heights associated with a landfalling category 4 hurricane. Note that surges in excess of 20
feet can be expected in the upper reaches of the bay. These predictions do not include the
potential added effects of compound flooding that would prevail if the storm surge is
accompanied by prolonged torrential rains. Compound flooding would be much worse than
storm surge alone. And, of course, high destructive wind-generated waves would be
superimposed on the storm tides.
Cedar Key

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Figure 8. Predicted storm tide (storm surge superimposed on high tide) height for a category 4
hurricane making land fall on Tampa Bay at high tide. Because of the funneling effects of the
bay, the areas in the upper (northeastern) part of the bay where Tampa’s city center is located
could expect over 20 feet of flooding. SLOSH model results from NOAA’s National Hurricane
Center.
The four “Nature Coast” counties immediately north of Tampa Bay-Pasco, Hernando,
Citrus and Levy- together have a total population of about 910,000 people and include the
communities of Tarpon Springs, New Port Ritchey, Hudson, Homosassa Springs, Crystal River
and Cedar Key. All of these communities are low lying and prone to flooding during even
modest tropical storms or category 1 hurricanes. Cedar Key (Fig. 9) is very low and completely
surrounded by water. Low sediment input has favored the growth of fairly extensive oyster reefs
on the shallow limestone surface beneath the waters of the shallow bays. Oyster and clam
farming are now a major source of livelihood for the residents of Cedar Key. The Nature Coast
is discussed in more detail in Chapter 14 of Tomorrow’s Coasts: Complex and Impermanent5
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75453-6. The jeopardy faced by the Nature Coast is well
illustrated by Figure 10 which shows that a landfalling category 3 hurricane could cause flooding
in excess of 9 feet to reach inland over 5 miles.

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Figure 9. Cedar Key, Levy County, Florida
Region 2. Barataria Bay to Houma, Louisiana including Port Fourchon
As noted earlier, the wetland of Coastal Louisiana (Fig. 11)18 is the largest in the
U.S.A.5.This unique and diverse ecosystem is regarded as one of the world’s natural treasures.
The cultural landscape is equally unique and diverse and includes, among its population of
roughly 2 million people, long-time Native American residents, extensive African American
Figure 10. Predicted Maxima of
Maximum Envelope of Water
(MOMs) for a Category 3
Hurricane affecting Florida’s
Nature Coast. Red=greater than
9 ft. (3m) above ground;
Orange=greater than 6 ft. (2m)
above ground; yellow=greater
than 3 ft (1m) above ground;
blue= less than 3 ft (1m) above
ground. Source:
NOAA/NWS/NHC/Storm Surge
Unit, NOAA/NOS/Office for
Coastal Management

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communities, descendants of French and German immigrants, mixed race Creoles and Acadians
(“Cajuns”) who were originally displaced from Nova Scotia. In economic terms, up to $138
billion in business, residential, and infrastructure assets are at risk and could be lost by 2050; a
single severe storm could cause disruption of $53 billion in economic activity18. Louisiana
supplies 18% of the US’s oil. The elaborate, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure that supports this
industry, mostly in the vicinity of Houma, LA including Port Fourchon (Fig. 12)19 is now at
serious risk of damage or destruction when future storms are superimposed on rising seas and
sinking lands. For the second workshop, we intend to focus on Jefferson, La Fourche and
Terrebonne Parishes which embrace Barataria Bay, Port Fourchon and the city of Houma, La.
Figure 11. Map of Coastal Louisiana depicting extent of current and projected land loss. The area
of the intended workshop includes Barataria Bay to Houma. Port Fourchon is in the center of this
region. (From Jeremy Alford, Louisiana Sportsman, February 2020)18
Currently, the Mississippi Delta is subsiding at rates up to 18 mm/yr18. When this
subsidence is added to the projected rates of global sea level rise of between 8 mm/yr and
16mm/yr, the total relative rate of sea level rise in coastal Louisiana will conceivably be between
26 mm/yr and 34 mm/yr or roughly up to 1 foot per decade. According to a recent article16, since
the 1930s, 1,900 sq. miles of coastal Louisiana lands have vanished. The Louisiana Coastal
Protection and Reclamation Authority (CPRA)11 projects that by 2050, without reclamation,
most of the wetlands will have been replaced by open water as portrayed in Figure 13. Houma
will be inundated and the narrow coastal barrier islands, such as Grand Isle, will be gone. The
protective wetlands surrounding New Orleans will also be gone if no action is taken. However,
the CPRA has a plan and it is laid out in detail in the 2017 report13. An interactive version can
be accessed on line at http://cims.coastal.louisiana.gov/masterplan/.

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Figure 12. Port Fourchon, LA. A center of oil and gas activity near Houma and highly vulnerable
to rising sea levels and future storm surges. From Barnes and Virgets19.
Assessing the Social Vulnerabilities of Gulf Coastal Communities
Over the past few years, there have been significant advances in understanding and
modeling societal factors and changes that can impact community resilience. A recent succinct
A
B
Figure 13. Coastal Louisiana
A. In 2017;
B. In 2050 without
reclamation. From Louisiana
Coastal Protection and
Reclamation Authority
(CPRA) on line Master Plan
Data Viewer (2017)
https://cims.coastal.louisiana.
gov/masterplan. Key: Dark
green=forest and swamp;
purple=floating marsh; light
green=freshwater marsh;
yellow=intermediate marsh;
orange=brackish marsh;
red=salt marsh

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review of these various approaches is offered by Wright21 in reference5. In addition to
understanding the likely-hoods and severity of flood events or sea level rise, socioeconomic
factors such as age, income, education, quality of housing and ethnicity must be taken into
account. Socioeconomic vulnerabilities of U.S. coastal communities are lower than those of
Bangladesh, India or most of South and South East Asia but greater than those of northern
Europe. A ten-year-old study by the U.S. Geological Survey22 concluded that the Gulf of
Mexico coast is highly susceptible to erosion and land loss. However, since socioeconomic
vulnerabilities are very diverse, each community requires its own unique assessment. The US
Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is
developing a tiered set of coastal resilience metrics that integrate engineering, environmental and
community factors23.
The “Surging Seas” on-line tool by the non-profit organization Climate Central is
particularly useful for estimating the expected levels of flooding and socioeconomic
vulnerability that may prevail in the event of any given height of sea level rise or storm surge
inundation. Application of this tool to the Tampa Bay area for a ten-foot high inundation event
shows that social vulnerability would be low to medium, but the entire Nature Coast would have
medium to high vulnerability. Social vulnerability to the same event for the entire Louisiana
“Case Study” region of Jefferson, La Fourche and Terrebonne Parishes is predicted to be high.
Important questions to be addressed during the proposed workshops should relate to the sources
of vulnerability. Selection of the most appropriate adaptation strategies will depend heavily on
the causes. The time scale of vulnerability is also important. Long-range vulnerabilities to
gradually rising sea levels are typically very different than short-range vulnerability to an
impending hurricane and storm surge. For example, long-range vulnerabilities can be determined
by a community’s ability or willingness to relocate or by the availability of funds to build
protective structures like levees and flood gates. Short-term vulnerability more often depends on
health and mobility of residents, adequacy of evacuation routes, proximity of storm shelters and
awareness of the general public about the threats. These topics should be discussed in detail
during workshops prior to selecting the most regionally appropriate resilience strategy.
Sea Level Rise Adaptation Strategies for Gulf LECZ Communities
One intended outcome of the coastal resilience program should be to reduce risk by
reducing societal vulnerability. As explained in the previous subsection, sea level rise (SLR)
requires a long-term adaptive strategy. These strategies typically involve extensive planning,
large investments and persuasion of threatened residents through outreach and education.
Extensive modeling must precede implementation of strategies and, for the models to be trusted,
they must be exhaustively tested against data. The strategies required to resettle, or otherwise
protect, threatened or displaced communities and help them adapt to changed or new
environments can be a major challenge and requires trust of officials and careful communication
involving community leaders, including clergy. Some approaches are addressed in the Oceans
Obs 19 white paper on this subject6. A more thorough and up to date review of the challenges of
effecting relocation of entire communities is offered by Hauer et al.24. On page 29 of their
article, those authors emphasize that: “migration from SLR is multifaceted, influenced by
environmental hazards and political, demographic, economic and social factors embedded within
policy incentives to encourage or obstruct migration — not just SLR itself.” Relocation, or even

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gradual retreat, are usually considered to be the strategies of last resort. Protection, (for example
by seawalls or levees), or accommodation, (for example by elevating buildings) are less stressful
on communities but may be less effective or more expensive depending on the circumstances.
Hauer et al.24 point out that, world-wide, the number of people at risk of relocation varies
between 88 million and 1.4 billion depending on how risk is defined. They also note that most of
these at-risk people live in the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) or the 100-year flood zone
of major rivers. For example, Bangladesh and low-lying Pacific islands (e.g. Marshall Islands)
are at considerable risk and are already yielding numerous SLR “refugees”. In assessing the
future likelihood of communities being relocated, social, economic and political factors often
outweigh environmental factors. However, relocation is probably the only viable option for those
living in areas predicted to be permanently inundated as opposed to areas prone to occasional
inundation. Perhaps the most formidable obstacles to relocation are cultural, religious or
ideological mindsets. A prominent example of this is the refusal of the inhabitants of rapidly
vanishing Tangier Island and Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay to accept government funded
relocation offers because of ideology-based denial of climate change and sea level rise25. The
so-far-successful relocation of the majority of Native American residents of Isle de Jean Charles,
Louisiana is described by Elizabeth Rush8 as perhaps the first American climate change refugees.
The apparent success of this project was largely attributable to the fact that the community was
kept intact, and the new location was relatively close to the old one. These examples make it
quite clear that a crucial element of any resilience program that we implement must be focused
on careful education and outreach to affected communities and must involve social scientists.
Workshops should try to identify the concerns and attitudes of residents and address causes of
resistance to change.
Applicability of Existing Ocean Models to Gulf Coast Cases
Effective adaptation to conditions that are likely to prevail decades from now will require
that we plan now for what is yet to come. This requires application of numerical models to
predict future conditions with as much confidence as possible. Prognostic models are a crucial
aspect of coastal resilience planning and are essential to anticipating a changed future. Reviews
of some existing models are offered in chapters 1 and 17 of the book Tomorrow’s Coasts:
Complex and Impermanent5. Testing model reliability involves comparing “hindcasted” model
output for prior recorded events with data from ocean observing systems such as the Gulf of
Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System. In the initiative we propose here, we do not intend to
develop new models or to engage in rigorous model inter-comparisons as was done in SURA’s
earlier model testbed programs7,26. Rather, we propose to assist local and regional officials and
planners in selecting the most appropriate existing models for their specific needs and local
conditions and providing the academic expertise required to run those models for anticipated
future scenarios. We also intend to provide the necessary cyber support to make the model output
readily accessible and understandable to end users. Some of the more well-known models are
listed in Table 1 below. All of these models are open source which means that output and model
code are freely shared and not proprietary.
For purposes of long-range planning, in contrast to operational short-range forecasting
requiring rapid execution of models, more advanced and higher resolution models than SLOSH

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can be used. For greater reliability, in future, ensemble results from multiple models will
probably be desired. However, for the initial goal of creating a prototype information exchange
network that links multiple disciplines and stakeholders, a single model, such as ADCIRC or
FVCOM may suffice. For specific application to Tampa Bay, Chen et al.38 built a Tampa Bay
Coastal Ocean Model (TBCOM) by nesting a downscaled FVCOM coastal ocean model on the
Gulf of Mexico HYCOM model. They applied TBCOM, coupled with in situ storm-surge
observations during Hurricane Irma in 2017. Results showed a close fit between observations
and model results and explained a large-scale exchange of water between the Bay and the shelf.
It should be emphasized that significant uncertainties are present in all storm surge predictions
and should be taken into account in risk assessments. Methodologies for quantifying the impacts
of uncertainties and forecast errors on storm surge predictions are offered by Resio et al.39
Table 1. Currently available open source inundation models
Predicting Coastal Risk and Recovery from Compound Events
As pointed out in a recent paper by Zscheischler et al.40, climate change is increasingly
being accompanied by the combining of multiple hazardous processes to create “compound
events”. However, traditional risk assessment analyses only consider one driver or hazard at a
time and neglecting the importance of compound events typically leads to risk being
Model Name
Description
Reference
ADCIRC
Advanced Circulation
Model
27
COAMPS
Coupled Ocean /
Atmosphere Mesoscale
Prediction System
28
Delft3D
Hydrodynamic model,
Structured grid
29
Delft3D FM
Hydrodynamic model,
Unstructured grid
30
FVCOM
Finite Volume Community
Ocean Model
31
HYCOM
Hybrid Coordinate Ocean
Model
32
MIKE 21 FM
Hydrodynamic model,
Unstructured grid
33
NCOM
Navy Coastal Ocean Model
34
ROMS
Regional Ocean Model
System
35
SLOSH
Sea, Lake, and Overland
Surges from Hurricanes
36
SWAN
Simulating WAves
Nearshore
37

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underestimated. For the specific case of coasts, a major and increasing threat is related to
compound flooding by storm surge and torrential rain40. The analyses by Wahl et al.41 show that
the occurrence of compound coastal flooding has been increasing over the past several decades.
Educating officials and stakeholders about the rising threats of compound flooding should be
high on the list of priorities of any coastal resilience information network. Unanticipated
flooding in recent years was caused by intense rains that accompanied Hurricanes Harvey, Irma,
Maria, Florence and Dorian. Compound flooding can also result from fluvial floods coinciding
with storm surge particularly in river deltas. Chen and Liu42 have modeled such situations. The
coupling of hydrology models to coastal ocean models is an area of active research and
considered by some agencies as a Grand Challenge43.
Human Health Considerations for Post-event Recovery
The ability of a community to recover from a flood event depends more on local factors
than on regional or global factors. For example, drainage infrastructure determines how long
contaminated flood waters may linger in neighborhoods and urban areas. Filthy water can
contain numerous diseases, snakes and flesh-eating bacteria. The adverse consequences of flood
events, especially coastal flooding, to human health have been evaluated by the World Health
Organization44, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)45 and the U.S.
Global Change Research Program46. Diseases and toxins spread by water and water-nurtured
vectors (e.g. mosquitos) include:
• Enteric infections from drinking water contamination and sewerage disruption;
• Vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever, yellow
fever, West Nile fever and leptospirosis;
• Infections from numerous diseases contracted through direct contact or wound exposure
with filthy, polluted flood waters;
• Water-borne pathogens particularly Vibrio bacteria which cause intestinal, skin, ear, eye
infections and septicemia (blood stream infection);
• Contamination by toxic chemicals during and after floods;
• Mold in homes following inundation.
To properly address these health-related issues, we intend to invite local health
professionals to our workshops and involve health professional in long range planning.
Post-event recovery plans need to include fairly detailed monitoring of water depth and water
borne pathogens. It is possible that some of the monitoring could utilize trained “citizen
scientists” following the example of Loftis et al.47.

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Figure 14. Contaminated floodwaters surrounding coastal houses. The lack of potable water
early in the recovery following large-scale natural disasters is a serious issue as was the case
throughout Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and in Houston after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Anticipating Future Wetlands Behavior
As pointed out earlier in this white paper, wetlands are the most extensive geomorphic
feature of the Gulf Coast and provide critical ecosystem services such as protecting communities
from storms and providing habitat for fish. These wetlands are seriously threatened by multiple
factors including rising sea levels, subsidence, increased storminess and dredging for access
channels48. Gulf Coast wetlands are receding landward in general, but some are receding more
rapidly than others. Prediction of future wetlands loss (or gain in some cases) is essential to
future coastal resilience planning. Planners and stakeholders must have access to reliable
predictions, and they must have a clear understanding of what the model results mean for the
long term. Since the 1970s, there have been multiple approaches to predicting future wetlands
behavior49-53. Factors considered in these predictions include rates of sea level rise, sediment
input and intensity of wave attack. Anthropogenic attacks, such as channel dredging and boat
wakes are not typically included because of a lack of information on the roles of such factors.
The most familiar and, hence widely applied, wetlands behavior models are the Marsh
Equilibrium Model (MEM)50 and the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM)51. They have
been applied, for example, to the wetlands of Florida’s Nature Coast and to US East Coast
wetlands. A more advanced hybrid model is the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere–Wave–Sediment
Transport (COAWST)52 model. The COAWST model involves coupling the ROMS
hydrodynamic model, the SWAN wave model, a sediment transport model and a vegetation
model making it more complex, but also more accurate than MEM or SLAMM. Both MEM and

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SLAMM neglect future changes in sediment input. The choice of wetlands models will depend
strongly on the environmental circumstances of local cases and the available resources for
running models. Observations of wetlands changes from satellites may suffice for “first cut”
assessments of likely wetlands degradation over the next couple of decades. But caparison of
hindcast model results with observed trends would be most valuable for long range planning.
Supporting Cyber Infrastructure for Data Sharing and Communication
For the program we advocate to succeed, it will be imperative for scientists and
stakeholders to readily share data, predictions, social vulnerabilities and changing needs and
priorities via an easily accessed cyber network. While data-sharing networks have existed for
several decades, they have been largely intended for use by the cognoscenti. The network we
envision must be underpinned by as much simplicity as is feasible but still be capable of
supporting sophisticated modeling. The stakeholders are likely to only need access to clear,
graphically displayed model results while the scientists will want to share open source model
code. In some cases, the questions sought from cyber infrastructure may simply require a map
visualization of a “what if” inundation scenario. In other cases, a data-intensive application may
be required to provide rapid dissemination of information to emergency managers. Data from
geographical information systems (GIS), data archives, citizen scientists and artificial
intelligence will ultimately be needed for purposes of adaptive management4. Another important,
but conventional role for the information technology team is likely to involve facilitation of
virtual workshops.
As the program progresses, it will become necessary to run complex models on large
grids and this will require access to High Performance Computing (HPC) resources. Information
technology is one of SURA’s enduring strengths and geographic information technology must
underpin the essential collaborative cyber network5. Complex systems models should become a
key feature once the groundwork has been laid in the initial phases of the program. HPC
resources will probably not need to be directly accessible to stakeholders but a distributed
network environment involving integrated software tools and advanced network services will be
needed to enable large‐scale scientific collaboration.
Proposed Approach and Scope of Work for the Near Future
We expect to begin with a modestly funded three-year program. Extensions may be
proposed along the way based on early successes and underpinned by adaptations based on
lessons learned in the first two or three years. This initiative is intended to be transdisciplinary
and multi-institutional. In addition to local, state, federal and private agencies that we have yet to
identify, we intend to involve the following entities:
• University of South Florida Center for Coastal Resiliency (CORE)
• University of South Florida Relevant Social Sciences Programs
• Louisiana State University Gulf Center for Environmental Prediction and Synthesis
• The Water Institute of the Gulf
• Mississippi State University Social Science Research Center
• University of Alabama at Huntsville Computer Science
• Florida Institute of Technology Gulf Coast Initiatives
• University of Central Florida Coastal Program

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• Virginia Tech (VT)/Future Earth- Coasts
• Hampton University Marine Sciences
• National Sea Grant Program
• Florida Resilient Coastlines Program/Florida Dept. Environmental Protection
• Louisiana Coastal Protection and Reclamation Authority (CPRA)
At the start of the program, a steering committee will be formed with members from most
or all of these institutions as well as relevant government agencies. This steering committee will
include representatives from each of the key subdisciplines including social sciences, physical
oceanography, hydrology, wetlands ecology, information technology, numerical modeling and
engineering. The steering committee will plan workshops, synthesize workshop outcomes and
recommendations and prepare templates for assembling the prioritized information. All
workshop participants will be asked to contribute to, or comment on, full workshop reports/white
papers. These activities should be carried out in year 1. A prototype cyber network for sharing
observed and modeled data, model code, metadata and questions and perspectives from
stakeholders will also be set up by the cyber infrastructure team.
It was agreed at the planning workshops that, to ensure that local and regional needs and
priorities are adequately taken into account, stakeholder engagement of policy makers, first
responders and the general public should precede the final selection of predictive models and
design of an information-sharing network. We advocate two 3-day workshops each of which
should include a field trip to local threatened sites on the first day followed by interactive
discussions involving stakeholders, government officials and scientists. The workshop
discussions on the third day, will engage multi-disciplinary scientists and stakeholders in
considering responses to hypothetical but realistic scenarios. As discussed earlier, the first
workshop should focus on the region of Tampa Bay and the “Nature Coast” north to Cedar Key
Florida and the second on the region from Barataria Bay to Houma, Louisiana including Port
Fourchon. If possible, on-site workshops are expected to take place at the University of South
Florida for case study 1 and at a Louisiana university, preferably near the case study region but
potentially at Louisiana State University. Should on-site workshops be undesirable because of
COVID-19, we will arrange virtual workshops.
In year 2, teams representing each of the subdisciplines will synthesize the relevant
available information on critical threats, vulnerabilities and processes such as rates of sea level
rise, historical inundation levels, observed rates of land/wetlands loss, and post-storm recovery
rates and issues taking guidance from recommendations that emerge from the two workshops.
This information will then be integrated into reports for each of the two case study sites.
Concurrent with this activity, numerical modelers should begin running selected inundation and
wetlands loss models for projected future sea level and tropical cyclone scenarios. Since we are
not proposing to develop new models or to provide operational “real-time” forecasts, rapid
execution should not be an issue and relatively elaborate or hybrid models should be used as
appropriate. Year 2 results should be integrated into non-technical reports, power-point
presentations and websites for consumption by managers, stakeholders and the general public.
Model results will be displayed in readily understood formats, including maps and graphs, as
they are generated. Near the end of the second year, one-day follow up “all-hands” meetings
with participants from each of two workshops should be held to communicate results, answer
questions and offer suggestions for the years ahead.

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By the start of the third year, teams should engage in serious cross fertilization and begin
interdisciplinary coupling among social, physical and ecosystems scientists while maintaining
substantive dialogue with stakeholders, particularly those responsible for making adaptive
management decisions. Integration in year 3 should include complex systems modeling aimed at
anticipating some of the non-linear and unexpected changes that the future could hold in the
event of different scenarios of climate and anthropogenic change. These modeling activities will
very likely require HPC resources that SURA can hopefully facilitate. Also, in the third year,
teams should extend their understanding and model grids to other regions of the Gulf and plan
programmatic extensions to study those regions in future years. Detailed and comprehensive
technical and non-technical publications on results from the first three years should be produced
by the end of Year 3
SURA’s Role as Program Manager and Collaboration Facilitator
SURA’s overarching hallmark is the Science of Collaboration. SURA’s primary role is
to support science and facilitate collaborations among numerous, geographically distributed
institutions. There is a clear societal need for increased collaboration that leads to improved
understanding and mitigation of extreme events. This will require “the science of collaboration”
among observational groups, modelers, stakeholders, and others to meet critical future needs in
coastal areas. Wright & Thom55 describe some of the challenges of promoting effective coastal
resilience collaboration, as well as some of the approaches that may help overcome those
challenges. Especially important is the communication of research results to stakeholders from
the community. True collaboration must involve recursive interaction of knowledge, engagement
and perceptions. Community leaders should be part of the collaborative planning process. All
members of collaborative teams must be respected as equal partners. In support of the earlier
SCOOP and COMT5 projects, SURA implemented a collaborative virtual environment. Both
multi-institutional projects required the accomplishment of multidisciplinary and integrated tasks
completed by geographically distributed university, government, and industry participants.
Typical components used to share information and integrate results in a collaborative virtual
environment were distributed databases, open source models, webinars, and other types of
collaborative software. Important software applications were components of the COMT
cyberinfrastructure designed to promote sharing of seminal datasets. In its recent report on
community resilience pertaining specifically to the Gulf (of Mexico) Research Program (GRP),
the National Academies56 (p. 83) recommends: “The GRP should create a resilience learning
collaborative for stakeholders to exchange information, approaches, challenges, and successes
in their respective and collective work to advance community resilience in the Gulf region. The
collaborative participants should include government (local, state, federal levels), industry,
academia, and other organizations engaged in addressing community resilience”.

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Figure 15. Conceptual diagram illustrating some components of an integrated coastal resilience
network.
Prognosis and Expected Outcomes for Science and Society
The challenge of identifying and assessing the relative roles of factors that are influenced
and impacted by coastal flooding under different regimes and designing innovative methods to
predict and prepare for future threats reaches well beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
The right approach will involve a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team. New
understandings of complex systems in general and the interconnections of socio-economic and
natural systems should result from this program. More specifically, we can gain better
understanding of the non-linear couplings among storm surge, hydrology, urban infrastructure,
ecosystem dynamics and humanity
The program we advocate specifically addresses Broader Impacts Goals 1,2,3,4 and 6 as
listed in Section 102 of the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act. The most prominent
impact will apply to Goal 2: Advancing the health and welfare of the American Public. We will
do this by enhancing the ability to predict and manage coastal risks from storms and
environmental change and communicating the new understandings to federal, local, regional and
state planners and policy makers, as well as to the general public. By enhancing the ability of
coastal cities and, including those with seaports and military bases, to anticipate, prepare for and
recover from inundation events, we will also address goals (1) increasing the economic
competitiveness of the United States and (3) supporting the national defense of the United States.
We also hope to collaborate with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will contribute to
Goal 3. As in past modeling testbed activities led by SURA, we intend to reach out to, and in
some cases partner with, private sector companies involved in coastal engineering, resource
management, consulting, and numerical modeling activities. In so doing, we will contribute to
Goal 4: enhancing partnerships between academia and industry in the United States. A major
component of our work plan is intended to include information dissemination via scenario-based
demonstrations, cyber tool kits, and the development of teaching materials for users, decision
makers, and the general public including coastal residents with little or no science background.
These efforts will be directly relevant to Goal 6: improving public scientific literacy and
engagement with science and technology in the United States.
Coastal
Communities
Sponsors
Industry
University Government
Convergence
Collaboration
Leadership
Tran sd isc ipl in ary
Space
Limited
Objective
Experiment
Demonstrations
Assessments
Fully integrated projects should include
stakeholders from government,
academia, and industry. Collaboration
leadership brings together the
environmental scientists, engineers, and
community to develop the foundations
of coastal resilience through integrated
research, training and dissemination of
essential information. SURA provides
collaboration leadership for teams
consisting of scientists, citizens, policy
makers and local managers.

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