Compound Flood Modeling (SFINCS)
Description
Compound flooding happens when several flood drivers act at once, typically storm surge, rainfall-driven runoff, and river discharge during a hurricane, so the combined flooding is worse than any single driver would produce on its own. I simulate these events with SFINCS (Super-Fast INundation of CoastS), a reduced-complexity flood model from Deltares that is fast enough to be practical for event-scale, high-resolution simulations while still capturing how the drivers combine over land.
The output is flood depth and inundation extent through the event, which supports coastal infrastructure risk assessment and emergency-response planning.
Example
Thumbnail: Texas Army National Guard soldiers in flooded Houston streets during Hurricane Harvey, 28 Aug 2017 — public domain (U.S. Army, 1st Lt. Zachary West), via Wikimedia Commons.