Group Research

   Collection of Data on Flood and Damage during Hurricane Sandy
    Department of Civil Engineering,City College
    The City University of New York

RAPID: Collection of data on flood and hydrodynamic impact on coastal infrastructures in the New York City metropolitan region during the Hurricane Sandy

NSF Award Number: CMMI # 1313877

Project manager: Kishor C. Mehta

PIs: Hansong Tang, Anil Agrawal

While Hurricane Sandy has significantly impacted the metropolitan New York City (NYC) region, it also left behind rich, unique, and valuable data on its trace in the form of water marks, damage and destruction to infrastructure, etc. In this project, perishable field data on flood, wind, and consequent damage to coastal facilities and infrastructure, such as high water marks, damaged residential houses, and fallen trees, has been collected through extensive site visits and discussions with stakeholders. The regions of data collection cover several zones in the New York City metropolitan area such as Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island as well as a few zones in New York and New Jersey. The data indicates that while there was extensive damage to coastal houses and wooden components, there has been no apparent damage to bridges, ports, and other major infrastructure because of hydrodynamic impact. A website integrated with a Google Earth file has been created to disseminate the collected data. Preliminary computer modeling has been made to numerically simulate the storm surge in Hudson River during Sandy, and the simulation has been compared to collected data. It is anticipated that the collected data will be very useful in study and prediction of future hurricane wind field, storm surge, and coastal flooding and plan development for mitigation of their damage to infrastructure.

A final project report is available at

http://tang.ccny.cuny.edu/Rapid_Sandy_project_report.pdf

and a Google Earth file containing all collected data is accessible and open to the public at

http://tang.ccny.cuny.edu/sandydata.kmz

Another link on Hurricane Sandy data collected by other agencies is at

http://54.243.149.253/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=c07fae08c20c4117bdb8e92e3239837e