Evolution of New York City's Approach to Natural Hazards: Adaptations and Strategies adressing Flooding from Hurricanes and Storm Surges

By 2050, in less than 30 years, 300 million people will become climate refugees due to the rising sea level and coastal flooding (Lewis, 2019). Inhabitants of megacities such as New York, Mumbai or Shanghai will face enormous changes within their environment. The rising sea levels, hurricanes, and floods will transform life in coastal cities and...

Modelling of storm surge due to hurricanes in Mississippi (USA)

The existing hydrodynamic models consider full physics approaches to calculate storm surge at coastal regions. However, due to the complexity of the equations that model these processes, the computational time and power required to run them can be large, compared to models that consider simplified equations. By contrast, simplified hydraulic...

Including stochastic rainfall distributions in a probabilistic modelling approach for compound flooding due to tropical cyclones: A case study for Houston, Texas

Hurricanes impose great threats on coastal communities in terms of hazard and impact. Recent hurricanes like Harvey (Texas, 2017) and Idai (Mozambique, 2019) emphasize the global character of this threat. In the U.S., Hurricane Harvey tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting $125 billion in...

Flood Risk Assessment of the Clear Creek Watershed considering compound events

Tropical cyclones generate risk of compound flooding in coastal watersheds due to both precipitation and storm surge. For regions prone to this phenomenon, it is clear that in order to properly quantify flood hazard...

Quantifying Wave Attenuation by Nature-based Solutions in the Galveston Bay

The main objective of this thesis is to assess the effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions in reducing flood risk in the Galveston Bay by means of wave attenuation. The methodology to answer these questions consists of both literature review and numerical modelling. The wave height reducing capabilities of marsh vegetation, seagrass meadows and...

On Centrality-Related Disaster Vulnerability of Network Regions

Networks are typically embedded in non-homogeneous areas and different parts/regions of the network may therefore be at risk from different types of disasters. This non-homogeneity leads to difficulties in protecting the network against (the risk of) disasters. Network operators need to be able to integrate predictions on possible future...

Spatiotemporal Risk-Averse Routing

A cyber-physical system is often designed as a network in which critical information is transmitted. However, network links may fail, possibly as the result of a disaster. Disasters tend to display spatiotemporal characteristics, and consequently link availabilities may vary in time. Yet, the requested connection availability of traffic must be...

Building-with-Nature Solutions for Hurricane Flood Risk Reduction in Galveston Bay, Texas: Conceptual Design Study

The enormous damage caused by hurricane Ike in the year 2008 has been the main incentive for several structural flood risk reduction plans in the Houston-Galveston Bay area. One of them is the ’Ike Dike’, a large-scale coastal barrier which closes Galveston Bay to prevent penetration of hurricane surges. A momentum gain for flood risk reduction...