• Speaker: Alejandra Rodríguez Enríquez, IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB)

Esporles, May 22, 2019. 

One major aspect controlling the impacts of storm surges along coastlines is their spatial extent. Here, we analyse the spatial footprints of storm surges along the world’s coastlines using observed and simulated storm surges from global tide gauge datasets and models, respectively.

Our findings also reveal that the cluster’s size differs around the globe, partially conditioned by coastal orography; more complex coastlines need a larger number of clusters to define the surge footprints.

The storm surge clustering is performed by applying three complementary methodologies. First, K-Means algorithm is used to divide the coast into a number of clusters often affected by the same storm surge event and to select a reference surge series in each of them. Second, we assess the match level and joint return period between these representative surge series and all other. We find a good agreement among these three methods applied as well as between surge spatial footprints by using measurements and simulated data.

Our results have provided important new insights into the spatial footprints of storm surge events around the world’s coastlines that will improve the ways in which coastal flood risk is identified, assessed and managed.

Date and Time: Wednesday, May 22, 11:00-14:00h

Place: IMEDEA Seminar Room

Source: IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB)