CAREER: The Effects of Spatiotemporal Storm Surge Clusters on Coastal Flood Risk

2017年9月，飓风艾尔玛和玛丽亚在不到两周的时间内在波多黎各造成强风、降雨和风暴潮。两年后的2019年，飓风多利安在巴哈马群岛和美国东南部造成了强烈的风暴潮，对数千公里的海岸线造成了不利影响。当多个风暴潮或其他灾害以相对接近的顺序影响同一地区时（即，时间聚类）或者当较长的海岸线延伸经常同时受到同一风暴潮事件的影响时（即，空间聚集），在时间和空间上产生复合效应，可能对沿海社区造成破坏性影响，同时也使重建家园和其他基础设施的（再）保险和政府预算紧张。尽管最近有许多例子，但目前的沿海风险评估忽视了这些复合效应，而海平面持续上升将进一步加剧这些复合效应。这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）项目的研究目标是阐明在空间和时间上的现有依赖性使这些事件更有可能发生，它们如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及人类和建筑环境如何受到影响。这将导致更明智的决定，以减轻短期和长期风险，并促进更有效的应急反应和沿海适应规划。将培训新一代多样化的沿海研究人员和从业人员，使其能够通过整合课堂教学，夏季培训和网络活动以及与社区合作伙伴的外联活动，在科学和工程学科中开展工作。将通过以下方式发展变革性知识：（1）利用历史观测数据和模型后报，确定空间和时间风暴潮集群的区域热点，（2）评估时间集群频率和空间集群规模的非平稳性，包括趋势和变异性，以及与大尺度气候模式的联系，（3）导出创新的多变量统计方法，以说明与已知和未知协变量一起的时空集群，（4）将时空风暴潮群纳入当前大尺度海岸风险评估-日气候和考虑未来海平面上升情景时。后者将说明灾害与风险的社会经济驱动因素之间的动态联系，同时得出与沿海决策者相关的创新影响衡量标准，例如，在某一年或十年内，x人受影响或x美元损失的可能性。探索性工作还将侧重于纳入其他危险（例如，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).In September of 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused strong winds, rainfall, and storm surges in Puerto Rico within less than two weeks of each other. Two years later, in 2019, Hurricane Dorian caused high storm surges in the Bahamas and southeastern U.S. adversely impacting thousands of kilometers of coastline. When multiple storm surges, or other hazards, affect the same area in relatively close succession (i.e., temporal clustering) or when longer coastlines stretches are often impacted simultaneously by the same storm surge event (i.e., spatial clustering), compounding effects in time and space with potentially devastating impacts to coastal communities occur while also straining (re-)insurance and government budgets for rebuilding homes and other infrastructure. Despite many recent examples, these compounding effects, which will be further exacerbated by continuing sea-level rise, are ignored in current coastal risk assessments. The research goal of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to illuminate where existing dependencies in space and time make such events more likely, how they are changing through time, and how humans and the built environment are affected by them. This will lead to better-informed decisions to mitigate short- and long-term risk and facilitate more efficient emergency response and coastal adaptation planning. A new generation of diverse coastal researchers and practitioners will be trained to be able to work across science and engineering disciplines by integrating classroom instruction, summer training and networking events, and outreach activities with community partners. Transformative knowledge will be developed by (1) using historic observational data and model hindcasts to identify regional hotspots of spatial and temporal storm surge clusters, (2) assessing non-stationarity, including trends and variability, in the frequency of temporal clusters and in the size of spatial clusters and the links to large-scale climate modes, (3) deriving innovative multivariate statistical methods to account for spatiotemporal clusters alongside known and unknown covariates, and (4) incorporate spatiotemporal storm surge clusters into broad-scale coastal risk assessments for present-day climate and when considering future sea-level rise scenarios. The latter will account for the dynamic linkages between the hazard and socio-economic drivers of risk while deriving innovative impact metrics relevant for coastal decision makers, e.g. the likelihood that x people are affected or x dollars of damages are incurred in a given year, or over a decade. Exploratory work will also focus on incorporating additional hazards (e.g., pluvial and/or fluvial flooding drivers, extreme wind, heat-stress) into the analysis to build the foundation for future multi-hazard risk assessments accounting for spatiotemporal clustering and compounding effects of connected climate extremes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.