Webinar: Improving Coastal Flood and Navigation Forecasting Through Model Coupling

Join us Wednesday, January 31st at 12 PM for the first webinar of the year in the SECOORA Coastal Observing In Your Community Webinar Series! Our speaker this month is Dr. Joseph Zhang from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

NEWS
January 2, 2024

The SECOORA Coastal Observing In Your Community Webinar Series will be hosting Dr. Joseph Zhang from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science on Wednesday, January 31st at 12 PM. He will lead a presentation on the development of a new Southeast Coastal Operational Forecast System (SECOFS), including progress updates and preliminary results. Please register here to secure your spot in the webinar.

Read below for the full abstract and a brief biography of Dr. Zhang.

Abstract

Dr. Zhang and his team are working with NOAA (CO-OPS, OCS, IOOS) and regional organizations (SECOORA) to develop a new operational Southeast Coastal Operational Forecast System (SECOFS) based on the work they have done on the Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (STOFS). SECOFS will include enhancement of the coupling infrastructure itself to be compliant with the Unified Forecast System (UFS). SECOFS will also comply with NOAA efforts to develop a generic coastal flood modeling skill assessment and evaluation infrastructure for operational models. Zhang’s team is also supporting the development of coupling capability for remapping 2D/3D fields for conversion of ocean model results to UFS downstream applications, such as safe and efficient navigation, risk reduction, and total water level.

About the Presenter

Dr. Joseph Zhang is a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and leads the development of the cross-scale modeling system, SCHISM. Trained in theoretical and computational fluid dynamics, he has successfully built an open community for the past 20 years for the advancement of hydrodynamic and hydrologic processes using cross-scale simulation approaches. At the moment his team is working with NOAA/OCS on total water prediction using a novel cross-scale platform known as STOFS3D, which has been successfully implemented for the Atlantic and Pacific. He’s also working with IOOS and CO-OPS to develop a regional application (SECOFS) focused on flood hazard and safe navigation in the southeastern US coast, and with NWC on the development of the next-generation National Water Model.