Improved prediction of storm surge inundation with a high-resolution unstructured grid model

Accuracy of predicting storm surge inundation depends on the model grid resolution. The spatial resolutions of many storm surge models are on the order of hundreds of meters to kilometers, which are not sufficient to resolve irregular shorelines and small topographic features. In this paper, storm surge and inundation simulation for Hurricane Andrew of 1992 was carried out with the unstructured tidal, residual, intertidal mudflat (UnTRIM) hydrodynamic model. A high-resolution unstructured grid with cell sizes as small as 20 m was placed over the Key Biscayne Bay area near Miami to better represent irregular shorelines and small morphological features such as barrier islands, rivers, canals, and inlets. A series of experiments was conducted to test model performance with respect to model grid resolution, time step selection, open boundary condition specification, and tidal influence. Results show that the model simulated maximum surge heights and areas of inundation along the Biscayne Bay coast very well, indicating that the UnTRIM model is useful in simulating storm surge flooding.