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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, May 21, 2018 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Photo of Dr. Ning Lin

Ning Lin

"Assessing and Mitigating Hurricane Storm Surge Risk in a Changing Environment"

ABSTRACT -- Hurricanes have induced devastating storm surge flooding worldwide. The impacts of these storms may worsen in the coming decades because of rapid coastal development coupled with sea-level rise and possibly increasing storm activity due to climate change. Major advances in coastal flood risk management are urgently needed. We present an integrated dynamic risk analysis for flooding task (iDraft) framework to assess and manage coastal flood risk at the city or regional scale, considering integrated dynamic effects of storm climatology change, sea-level rise, and coastal development. We apply the framework to New York City. First, we combine climate-model projected storm surge climatology and sea-level rise with engineering- and social/economic-model projected coastal exposure and vulnerability to estimate the flood damage risk for the city over the 21st century. We derive temporally-varying risk measures such as the annual expected damage as well as temporally-integrated measures such as the present value of future losses. We also examine the individual and joint contributions to the changing risk of the three dynamic factors (i.e., sea-level rise, storm change, and coastal development). Then, we perform probabilistic cost-benefit analysis for various coastal flood risk mitigation strategies for the city. Specifically, we evaluate previously proposed mitigation measures, including elevating houses on the floodplain and constructing flood barriers at the coast, by comparing their estimated cost and probability distribution of the benefit (i.e., present value of avoided future losses). We also propose new design strategies, including optimal design (e.g., optimal house elevation) and adaptive design (e.g., flood protection levels that are designed to be modified over time in a dynamic and uncertain environment).

SPEAKER -- Ning Lin is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. She integrates science, engineering, and policy to study hurricane hazards, how they change with the climate, and how to better mitigate their impact on society. Her work has been published in high-impact journals including Science, Nature Climate Change, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Lin received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University in 2010. She also received a certificate in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy in 2010 from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Before rejoining Princeton as an assistant professor in 2012, she conducted research in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT as a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow.



Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov