4.6 Article

Hindcast of pluvial, fluvial, and coastal flood damage in Houston, Texas during Hurricane Harvey (2017) using SFINCS

Journal

NATURAL HAZARDS
Volume 109, Issue 3, Pages 2343-2362

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11069-021-04922-3

Keywords

Pluvial flooding; Tropical cyclone; Risk assessment; Storm surge; Hydrodynamic modeling

Funding

  1. NSF PIRE Grant [OISE-145837]
  2. Texas General Land Office [9-181-000-B574]
  3. Deltares research program Quantifying Flood Hazards and Impacts [1123750]

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This study demonstrates the accurate prediction of flood depth and extent during Hurricane Harvey in Houston using the SFINCS model, showing much larger total losses compared to FEMA's preliminary assessment. The incorporation of spatially-distributed pluvial hazards into flood risk analysis is crucial for identifying high-risk areas and improving loss estimation methods.
As demonstrated by recent tropical cyclone events, including U.S. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (2017), and Florence (2018), the destructive potential of flooding driven by wind, precipitation, and coastal surge coupled with growing exposure of people and property along coastlines is leading to unprecedented damage from coastal storms. In this paper, we demonstrate the ability of the recently developed Super-Fast INundation of CoastS (SFINCS) model to delineate the depth and extent of flooding during Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas. The model was validated against water level time-series at twenty-one United States Geological Survey (USGS) observation points and 115 high water mark locations. FEMA depth-damage curves were used to estimate building and content damages from the combined flood sources (e.g., pluvial, fluvial, and marine) and total losses are compared against insurance claims registered with the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and a depth grid produced during the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA). The results suggest that Harvey may have caused upwards of $8.3 billion USD in uninsured residential loss within the model domain. Comparison against FEMA's PDA indicates that the SFINCS model predicts much larger total losses, indicating that the incorporation of spatially-distributed pluvial hazards into the modeling method is critical for identifying high-risk areas and supports the need for further flood risk analyses in the region.

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