Web-Based Hurricane Storm Surge and Flood Forecasting Using Optimized IFSAR Bald Earth DEMs

The Phase II objective is to deliver two commercial products: 1) variational analysis software that can produce optimized DEM maps for any region along the US coast; and 2) hurricane flood atlases for any coastal area.These atlases will not only include higher-resolution storm surge simulations but rainfall effects as well. For flash flood mapping, the well-established HEC software program will be obtained from the Hydrologic Engineering Center of the US Army Corps of Engineers. These maps will have overlaid roads and detailed coastline information. Product evaluation partners will provide guidance on how to make the graphical output easy to interpret for their use.It is important to note the power and versatility of variational analysis - non-conventional variables (in this case, optical pixel brightness and backscatter) can be incorporated into a cost function to find the optimized solution for an unrelated variable (in this case, elevation).The current implementation of variational analysis yields desirable improvements to bare-earth estimation in several key areas, while other aspects require more work. There are also validation uncertainties due to a lack of ground truth that hampers both the development of the algorithm and in validation efforts. These shortcomings will be addressed in Phase II.