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When unusual events occur we often get asked to assist on unusual remedial projects. As marine guys we never expected to get called in on 9/11, but we were, and after Sandy we have been asked to assist with waterproofing design of New York City subway stations.
This is interesting work, because it allows us to interact with very smart people in other engineering and design specialties and the interaction between different disciplines often results in the most innovative and effective solutions.
Also things that may be second nature for one discipline may not be second nature for another discipline. As maritime engineers we care about wave heights, but not storm surges (since ships are supposed to float on top of storm surges). On the other hand, when considering shore based installations, storm surge becomes at least as significant as wave heights.
This blog looks at how high the water went during Sandy and what to expect in the future.
New York City/New Jersey/Long Island is a rather uncomfortable flood zone, but, fortunately it is not like the Netherlands where a dike breach will result in massive rapid flooding of large areas with few escape opportunities. In the New York Metropolitan area sufficiently high land is almost always close by. However, economic impact potentials can be quite impressive with severely flooded infrastructure and, in the case of hurricane force winds, very high wave impacts in its coastal areas. Therefore it is certainly useful to figure out how high the water can rise in a really bad storm.
Storm surge is the increase in water level above the expected tide for that day. A storm tide is the expected tide at the peak of the storm plus the storm surge.
Storm surge does not take into account wave heights that impact the shore. Therefore, a storm surge of 15 feet and 9 foot high waves will result in wave impacts of 19.5 feet above the expected tide level (Since wave height is measured trough to crest, but even that is fuzzy since there may be breaking waves).
As such: Wave Impact Height = ½ Wave Height plus Storm Surge plus Normal Tide.
There is actually a lot of confusion about this terminology and many numbers are simply incorrectly stated.
The present method for predicting storm surge is to use the SLOSH computer modeling system. In various publications it is now suggested that a storm surge in excess of 32 feet is possible in New York City if a Category 4 hurricane were to strike the city at the most uncomfortable location and at the most uncomfortable angle. That is a lot of water, but this number may be misleading since a 2010 Journal of Geophysical Research paper indicates, using SLOSH modeling, that the maximum surge that can be expected in NYC is about 5 meters (16 feet, but this is true surge, not related to the state of tide). This paper indicates this is a very rare event (1 in 50,000 years; probably less likely to occur than a major NYC earthquake), but add hurricane ocean waves, and we are dealing with a very impressive environmental force, especially along the shores. (This paper also indicates surges in the 3 meter (10 feet) range as a once in 500 year event.)
Nevertheless, the 2009 NYC Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan indicates that a Category 3 Hurricane could put Coney Island under 21 feet of water. This appears to include storm driven waves and therefore we are still not quite reaching these 32 feet heights. Within SLOSH modeling there are other numbers such as Maximum Envelope of Water, and also Maximum of Maximum (MOM). For New York City there are some predictions for MOM’s that are in the 34 foot range, but these are localized and rare events, and will not apply over the entire New York Metropolitan area.
So how much water could we expect in a really rare situation?
For reference, the highest recorded Atlantic/Gulf Coast surge that I could find was during Katrina at Pass Christian at 27.8 feet (this might be storm tide, other sources mention 25 feet). The highest recorded wave impact occurred in Biloxi at 34.1 feet even though the surge was less, at around 22 feet. (This source reported a 22 foot surge, a 1 foot tide and 11 foot waves. This is incorrect, since this should result in a wave impact height of 28.5 feet instead of 34.1 feet and therefore the highest wave might have been 22 feet which is quite high, but may occur occasionally)
The surge during Sandy was reported at 14 feet at Battery Park, and it did strike during high tide. In another source it is reported at 9.23 feet, and this may indicate that the 14 feet number relates to storm tide, since the late October high tide was about 5 feet above baseline.
In 1821 NYC suffered a storm surge of about 13 feet and it suffered a storm surge of about 11 feet from Hurricane Donna in 1960, but it is not clear if these are actually storm surges or, rather storm, tides.
Besides Sandy, a more personal high mark was a surge of about 5 feet on top of a high tide in the December 1992 Noreaster, which set the pre-Sandy high water mark in my boat club house. This storm also resulted in serious flooding in NYC, but paled in comparison to Sandy. The Sandy high water mark in the club house is about 4 feet above the 1992 Monmouth Boat Club high water mark, which would support that, during Sandy, we had a 9 foot storm surge atop a high tide.
So how special was Sandy? Comparison to the SLOSH model would indicate that we had a 100 to 200 year event. The SLOSH model also would indicate that in a worst case (1 in 50,000 years, ignoring sea level rise, which, compared to these numbers, is relatively small at this time) we could have a surge that is 7 feet higher than we encountered during Sandy plus much higher waves. But these waves we would only encounter along the coast and would be much lower at the Battery.
Therefore, for hardening the New York City core against the very worst flooding, we would do well looking at flood protection against storm tides (tide plus surge) of about 22 feet (coincidence of a high tide of 6 feet plus a very rare 16 feet surge), but we have to compare this against the reality that, as far as we know, New York City, since its founding, has never seen more than a 14 feet storm tide.
There are two other considerations. One is added impact of waves, and in this regard in the coastal areas exposed to ocean waves, Sandy did not begin to be a truly impressive storm and is nowhere near a 100 year storm. For this reason (and a number of other really good reasons) a good case can be made that we have no business at all in living in these exposed areas and it leaves one wondering why the government supports such poor risk management.
The other factor is global warming. At this stage it is incredibly difficult to predict how much the ocean will rise and if global warming will increase the frequency and size of storms, but if global warming played a factor in Sandy, due to only limited ocean level rises so far, it only amounted to a few inches, not feet.
Regardless, some planning to reduce the impact of storm surges should be money well spent. Maybe it will result in local waterproofing or maybe New York City will develop a Delta Works approach, but it certainly will be interesting.
Automated driving is central to the Maxi Taxi concept. Although the Maxi Taxi ferry concept does not specifically require full automated driving, the ferry concept, at a minimum, will use automated parking type technology to load and unload the ferries automatically with human drivers on public roads. However, the Maxi Taxi concept will really come into its own with automated driving.
Automated driving is probably the most radical component of the Maxi Taxi concept from a consumer point of view.
I have been closely following automated driving efforts for over 15 years, and today we are far past the proof of concept phase. As a matter of fact, there are no technological barriers to automated driving and the remaining barriers are related to manufacturing, standardization, and regulatory issues and consumer acceptance.
M&O loves training new consultants. We look for people who are smart, with great basic training and, most of all, people who are inherently inquisitive and will ask the questions that lead to new knowledge for all of us.
So, we are in the middle of dealing with a heavy fuel oil claim and our most recent newbie asks: Why are ships not supplied with pre-purified fuel oil?
That stopped us old ones in our tracks, and elicited the immediate standard defensive response: “Good Question?!”
And then one begins to think......
This is our third blog on the Maxi Taxi concept, for earlier blogs on Maxi Taxi go to:
Containerizing People Transportation (Maxi Taxi 1)
What Needs to be Standardized? (Maxi Taxi 2)
The Maxi Taxi concept has chosen five feet as the working standardization width for the system, which would result in road lane widths of about 6 feet. This is a nice return to more traditional road widths, noting that the narrowest roman roads were 5 ½ feet wide (and double lanes were about 13 ½ feet wide).
It is possible that the arbitrary width of five feet is not the exact optimal width, but chances are it is pretty close for quite a number of reasons.
Five feet is a pretty normal width for passenger cars, even though we can choose to design and built passenger cars with widths between less than 2 feet (when thinking in terms of motorcycles) up to 8 feet and possibly a little more. Today cars are generally wider than five feet, for quite a number of reasons, many of which are esthetic. While it is fun to design attractive cars, the Maxi Taxi concept aims for maximum utility and efficiency for transportation although, hopefully, the end result will have some level of attractiveness. read more »
The April issue of (mt), the SNAME house magazine, will feature an article by Dr. Wayne Neu, professor of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech. Dr. Neu updated the classic 1950's Gabrielli - von Karman plot using more recent vehicle data collected by the students in one of his classes.
The Gabrielli - von Karman plot is one of those devices that allows one to think in terms of the real big picture. In essence, it plots vehicle drag over lift against vehicle speed. It is a cornucopia of transportation devices and allows one to compare one mode of transportation against another as far as basic efficiencies at various speeds is concerned.
Boat shows tend to depress me. It is important to stay up with the latest trends, but most boat shows focus so heavily on consumer products that it is difficult to extract real joy from them. My friend and fellow boat lover Captain Dannie Schade, owner of Classic Boat Rides, convinced me and our wives to take a roadtrip to Portland ME last weekend to attend the Maine Boatbuilders Show.
This is the show for real boat lovers. If you ever feel jaded or depressed about the looks and quality of today's boats, even a few minutes at this show proves that all is well in boatland. Great people, great boats, great setting, great food, great innovations and pure joy. I'll let the pictures tell the story.
In the Maxi Taxi 1 blog we introduced the Maxi Taxi concept as a thought experiment to explore how people transportation can be made to be more efficient by whole system design.
The Maxi Taxi is a passenger transportation concept that, through standardization, aims to rapidly increase system efficiencies. System efficiencies are different from component efficiencies and potentially have much more powerful payoffs.
The Federal Government aims to increase efficiencies of cars by about 100% in the foreseeable future. That is a very laudable goal, but, if that goal is achieved, we will not know how much less fuel we will burn because we are not working to an underlying standard or restriction.
Therefore, once the greater fuel efficiencies are achieved, it could very well occur that, due to strongly reduced fuel operational costs, customers can afford to purchase larger cars, which then, in turn, end up burning more fuel and which then results in reduced system efficiency gains.
A disaster like the Costa Concordia opens a wide variety of investigations and undoubtedly many people are very busy in analyzing what caused the vessel to strike the reef and to capsize, but striking reefs and capsizing actually is nothing new and, on a technical level, actually is pretty well understood.
What is much more interesting is to place oneself in the Master’s mind immediately after the Costa Concordia struck the rock. From a technical point of view, this is the interesting part of a disaster, and where proper analysis and training can make a real difference.
Undoubtedly, it is necessary to avoid disasters. But since disasters will always happen, an even more important goal is to figure out what to do once you are in the middle of the disaster.
What really is a disaster? A disaster is an undesirable condition, but maybe it is better to define a disaster as a condition where the manager can no longer figure out what to do to get control of the condition.
This is an important consideration, because this definition shows that one person’s disaster is not necessarily another person’s disaster.
Which brings us to John Boyd. John Boys is one of the most amazing characters of the second half of the 20th century that nobody has heard off. Here I will only discuss one aspect of his accomplishments. John Boyd was an amazing fighter pilot, but instead of riding the mystique of the right stuff, John Boyd managed to figure out what the right stuff is and developed a fighter pilot training method to teach the right stuff. He called it the OODA loop.
It stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide and Act, and then do it all over again right away.
We call this peculiar car a Maxi Taxi. Maxi Taxis are just a concept that was turned into this computer model by our intern Zach Davis (Harry Ottaway's grandson!), but they are an interesting concept and have features that are pretty much available today.
The Maxi Taxi concept rests on the success of containerization and maybe a Maxi Taxi can be described as a people container. It is designed to hold seven people, and its goal is to transport people much more efficiently than we do today.
The car itself takes advantage of very rapidly emerging technologies such as battery/hybrid/fuel cell power, automated driving, ubiquitous web presence and GM’s Hy-Wire platform concept. These concepts are pretty much road ready, but are looking for an introductory application where they can be fully integrated into the transportation system. We are all interested in these concepts, but to properly introduce them in the most optimized fashion is very difficult because it needs to displace existing technologies.
Corporate longevity might imply tradition, but actually, and especially in the maritime industry, longevity is directly related to staying on the cutting edge and being involved in the next big thing.
On March 5 and 6, 2013 Martin & Ottaway will be a minor sponsor of the Marine Log 2013 Offshore Alternatives Conference at the Washington DC Marriott.
Will tidal power be viable? Will offshore wind be a big energy contributor? Quite frankly we do not know, but answers only appear when the questions are studied and debated. We look forward to studying the cutting edge and hope to see you there.
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