Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Vulnerability of population and transportation infrastructure at the east bank of Delaware Bay due to coastal flooding in sea-level rise conditions

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Natural Hazards Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Catastrophic flooding associated with sea-level rise and change of hurricane patterns has put the northeastern coastal regions of the United States at a greater risk. In this paper, we predict coastal flooding at the east bank of Delaware Bay and analyze the resulting impact on residents and transportation infrastructure. The three-dimensional coastal ocean model FVCOM coupled with a two-dimensional shallow water model is used to simulate hydrodynamic flooding from coastal ocean water with fine-resolution meshes, and a topography-based hydrologic method is applied to estimate inland flooding due to precipitation. The entire flooded areas with a range of storm intensity (i.e., no storm, 10-, and 50-year storm) and sea-level rise (i.e., current, 10-, and 50-year sea level) are thus determined. The populations in the study region in 10 and 50 years are predicted using an economic-demographic model. With the aid of ArcGIS, detailed analysis of affected population and transportation systems including highway networks, railroads, and bridges is presented for all of the flood scenarios. It is concluded that sea-level rise will lead to a substantial increase in vulnerability of residents and transportation infrastructure to storm floods, and such a flood tends to affect more population in Cape May County but more transportation facilities in Cumberland County, New Jersey.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abramowitz M, Stegun I (1965) Handbook of mathematical functions. Dover Pub, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson JM (1982) An economic-demographic model of the United States labor market. Res Popul Econ 4:117

    Google Scholar 

  • ArcGIS (2013) http://resources.arcgis.com/en/home/. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • Cape May County Dept Tourism (2013) http://www.thejerseycape.com/. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • Chien SI-Jy, Opie K (2006) Analysis and modeling of Cape May County roadway elevations and evacuation routes, final report, NJDOT, May

  • Chien S, Opie K, Ozbay K (2000) Analysis and modeling of evacuation for Cape May County, New Jersey, Institute of Transportation Engineer J, September, pp 69–75

  • Condon AJ, Sheng YP (2012) Evaluation of coastal inundation hazard for present and future climates. Nat Hazards 62:345–373

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowell M, Coulton K, Johnson C, Westcott J, Bellomo D, Edelman S, Hirsch E (2010) An estimate of the US population living in 100-year coastal flood hazard areas. J Coastal Res 26:201–211

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ebersole BA, Westerink JJ, Buny S, Dietrich JC, Cialone MA (2010) Development of storm surge which led to flooding in St. Bernard Polder during Hurricane Katrina. Ocean Eng 37:91–103

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabriel VA, Swanson KL, Soden BJ (2008) Climate change: whither hurricane activity? Science 322(5902):687–689

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galantowicz JF (2002) High-resolution flood mapping from low-resolution passive microwave data. Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 3. IGARSS ‘02. 2002 IEEE International, pp 1499–1502

  • Glavac S, Hastings PA, Childs IR (2003) Demographic projection as a tool for analysing trends of community vulnerability. Aust J Emerg Manag 18(3):9–20

    Google Scholar 

  • Hertsgaard T, Murdock S, Toman N, Henry M, Ludtke R (1978) REAP economic-demographic model: technical description. North Dakota Regional Environmental Assessment Program, Bismarck

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  • IPET (2009) Performance evaluation of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection System. Final Report of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, vol 8, Appendix 8, July U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

  • Johnson CP (1930) Many drive to resorts on Atlantic: coast places draw drivers from Pittsburgh District. The Pittsburgh Press, June 22, p 3 of the Automobile section

  • Landers J (2009) FEMA awards contracts for next phase of flood mapping program. Civil Eng 79(7):734–735

    Google Scholar 

  • Lin N, Emanuel KA, Smith JA, Vanmarcke E (2010) Risk assessment of hurricane storm surge for New York City. J Geophys Res Atmos 115:D1812

    Google Scholar 

  • Mondal P, Tatem AJ (2012) Uncertainties in measuring populations potentially impacted by sea level rise and coastal flooding. PLoS ONE 7: e48191. doi:10.1371

  • Mulvihill G (2009). Dangerous fishing, quaint B&B’s share N.J. resort. Delaware County Daily Times, March 30

  • Muscarella PA, Barton NP, Lipphardt BL Jr, Veron DE, Wong KC, Kirwan AD Jr (2011) Surface currents and winds at the Delaware Bay mouth. Cont Shelf Res 311:2821293

    Google Scholar 

  • NGDC (2013) http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • NECIA (2007) Confronting climate change in the U.S. Northeast: science, impacts, and solutions

  • New Jersey DEP (2013) http://www.nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/parks/camping.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • New Jersey DLWD (2013a) http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/dmograph/lfproj/method20.pdf. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • New Jersey DLWD (2013b) http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/dmograph/lfproj/lfproj_index.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • NYC PCC (2009) Climate change adaptation in New York City: building a risk management response New York. Executive Summary of the 2009 Report, The New York Academy and Sciences

  • Pfeffer WT, Harper JT, O’Neel SO (2008) Kinematic constraints on glacier contributions to 21st century sea-level rise. Science 321(5894):1340–1343

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Polistina Associates (2009) LLC, Floodplain Management Plan. City of Cape May, Cape May County, New Jersey, September 10

  • Psuty NP, Collins M (1986) Holocent sea level in New Jersey. Phys Geogr 7:156–167

    Google Scholar 

  • RITA (2013) http://www.transtats.bts.gov/. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • Savadore L, Bucholz MT (1993) Great storms of the Jersey shore. Down The Shore Publishing, Harvey Cedars

    Google Scholar 

  • Shepard CC, Agostini VN, Gilmer B, Allen T, Stone J, Brooks W, Beck MW (2012) Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York. Nat Hazards 60:727–745

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Solomon S et al (2007) Technical summary. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang HS, Kraatz S, Wu XG, Cheng WL, Qu K, Polly J (2013) Coupling of shallow water and circulation models for prediction of multiphysics coastal flows: method, implementation, and experiment. Ocean Eng 62:56–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Temimi M, Leconte R, Brissette F, Chaouch N (2007) Flood and soil wetness monitoring over the Mackenzie River Basin using AMSR-E 37 GHz brightness temperature. J Hydrol 333:317–328

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • TRB (2008) Potential impacts of climate change on U.S. Transportation (Special Report 290). Washington, DC

  • USCB (2010). Profile of general population and housing characteristics: 2010 for Cape May city, Cape May County, New Jersey

  • USGS CLIDAR (2013) Center for LIDAR information coordination and knowledge. http://lidar.cr.usgs.gov/. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • USGS TD (2013) Topographical data for the U.S. USGS seamless data warehouse. http://nationalmap.gov/viewer.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • US Census Bureau (2013) http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • VDATUM (2013) Vertical datum conversion tool. http://vdatum.noaa.gov. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • Watson S (2001) March 1962 ‘Ash Wednesday’ storm. Special reports: storms of the century. Report no. 9. Available at: www.weather.com/newscenter/specialreports/sotc/storm9/ page1.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2013

  • Wu S-Y, Yarnal B, Fisher A (2002) Vulnerability of coastal communities to sea-level rise: a case study of Cape May County, New Jersey, USA. Clim Res 22:255–270

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yin J, Schlesinger ME, Stouffer RJ (2009) Model projections of rapid sea-level rise on the northeast coast of the United States. Nat Geosci 2:262–266

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The work presented in this paper is sponsored by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the US Department of Transportation through the University Transportation Centers program. Partial support from NOAA CREST is also acknowledged. The authors are grateful to Mr. Brian O’Connor at Planning Department of Cape May County, New Jersey, for data information and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, City College, The City University of New York, 138th Street and Convent Avenue, New York, NY, 10031, USA

    Han Song Tang, Marouane Temimi, Qu Ke & Simon Kraatz

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA

    Steven I-Jy Chien & Liuhui Zhao

  3. Oceanography Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, MS, 39529, USA

    Cheryl Ann Blain

Authors
  1. Han Song Tang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Steven I-Jy Chien
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marouane Temimi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Cheryl Ann Blain
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Qu Ke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Liuhui Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Simon Kraatz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Han Song Tang.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tang, H.S., Chien, S.IJ., Temimi, M. et al. Vulnerability of population and transportation infrastructure at the east bank of Delaware Bay due to coastal flooding in sea-level rise conditions. Nat Hazards 69, 141–163 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0691-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-0691-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation