Testing compound floods by a new oceanic-coastal model in Cuba: preliminary results.

Testing compound floods by a new oceanic-coastal model in Cuba: preliminary

results.

Daniela Cordova de Horta 1,2 , Luis. F Cordova Lopez 1 , Antonio Jodar-Abellan 2,3 , Andres

Fullana 2,4 , Daniel Prats 2,4

1 Technological University of La Habana, Cuba.
2 University Institute of Water and Environmental Sciences, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
3 Spanish Research Council, Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura (CEBAS-CSIC), Soil
and Water Conservation Group, Murcia, Spain.
4 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain.
Abstract:
Due to the climate change recognized in recent years, the danger on the coasts,
at a global scale, has increased critically. This issue is associated with the increase in the
global average temperature, which has the effect of raising the average sea level and the
increase in intensity and frequency of Extreme Meteorological Events (EME).
Currently, more than 50% of the world's population lives in coastal regions and a
significant part in coastal areas vulnerable to flooding as a result of the rise in the mean
sea level, rainfall and river flooding. The simultaneous occurrence or brief succession of
these hazards can cause flooding that generates impacts greater than those caused by
these events individually. In this study, a new technique of composite flood analysis is
proposed in numerous urban-coastal areas and basins of Cuba by coupling
hydrodynamic simulation tools. In particular, we present the results of the establishment
phase of the oceanic-coastal model called “Delft 3d Flow and Delft 3d Wave”, where
hurricanes Katrina, Isaac, Zeta and Ike were chosen. Likewise, the Era5 database was
used to generate the wind and pressure fields associated with hurricanes. In addition, the
results of a set of tests are presented to define the way of nesting and the best resolution
ratios of the computation meshes of the different domains. Finally, statistics parameters
were applied to support the selection of the best alternatives by comparing our model
results with the observations obtained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) databases. From the author’s knowledge, the proposed
methodology can provide to planning policy makers very useful information in the face
of flood effects especially in a study area (Cuba) where flow registers from stream
gauge stations are considerably scarce.