Presenter
Michelle Hummel, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Water Resources
University of Texas at Arlington
Description
Located at the confluence of terrestrial and marine processes, coastal regions are impacted by watershed flooding driven by precipitation and river discharge as well as marine flooding due to storm surges. When these processes interact spatially or temporally, their combined effects often lead to more severe flooding. In this talk, I will discuss the development of a copula-based Bayesian framework for nonstationary compound flood hazard assessment that accounts for the effects of sea-level rise and changing patterns of precipitation. The framework is applied to identify the locations along the US coastlines that will experience the highest risk of compound coastal-inland flooding while accounting for uncertainty. Through several case studies, I will then demonstrate how different dependence and trend characteristics influence the frequency of extreme events and affect the risk of failure through the design life of flood structures. The developed framework can inform more comprehensive flood hazard assessments and the design of flood control strategies that are robust to future uncertainties.
