The greatest potential for loss of life related a hurricane is from it's storm surge. For emergency managers, identifying what areas have the greatest vulnerability to storm surge is paramount for the mitigation of storm surge hazards. SLOSH is a GIS tool which the National Hurricane Center uses to estimate storm surge heights.

In this example, I have estimated and mapped the number of potentially inundated census block groups during the event of a Category 3 hurricane landfall in Brunswick County, North Carolina.

Impervious surfaces are (mainly) artificial structures (roads, parking lots, rooftops) which pave and seal the soil surface preventing or greatly reducing rainwater infiltration.  Impervious surfaces have a negative impact on the quality of surface water and the ability of ground water to recharge (replenish itself).  Therefore, monitoring the spatial pattern and percentage of impervious surfaces relative to non-impervious is an important aspect of water resources management. Moreover, as urban areas become more populated the a need exists to quickly and accurately assess the percentage of impervious surfaces to non-impervious within a watershed is of increasing importance, so that timely and correct land-use decisions can be made by local managers.

The Impervious Surface Analysis Tool (ISAT) is an extension for ArcGIS which calculates the percentage of impervious surface area within a specified geographic area (i.e., watersheds, municipalities, subdivisions).  ISAT results can also be used to predict how different management strategies could impact local water quality.

For my Masters Thesis I am using Terrestrial Laser Scanned surveys from the GAP fire to investigate the effects of a recent wildfire on hydrologic and sedimentologic connectivity during the first significant rain event.  Here I show examples of the captured terrain, hydrologic networks and their alteration, caused by the first significant rain event after the wildfire disturbance.

The surveys are both 1cm Digital Earth Models (DEMs).  However, computationally the grids are larger than can be handled in ArcMap, therefore the DEM was re-sampled to a resolution of 2cm so that hydrologic networks could be calculated. Mean absolute errors for x, y, and z in both surveys were less than or equal to +/- 3mm. The procedures for hydrologic flow network delineation are based on the Deterministic 8 (D8) model for flow over a 2cm DEM. The D8 method produces a single flow direction towards the steepest slope of one of eight grid cells neighboring the initial center cell (O’Callahan and Mark, 1984; Tarboton, 2003). The D8 method was chosen for its simplicity and widespread use in hydrologic terrain analysis (Kiss, 2004).

The recent proliferation of GIS (Geographic Information System) has made it a common acronym in a multitude of fields.  You benefit from a GIS everyday, but you have probably never noticed. Think of the revolution of in-car GPS; an array of Global Positioning Satellites track you, but they don't track you through a blank screen, do they? No, the GPS places you amongst a detailed map of highways, streets, overpasses and lakes. That map of features is a GIS. A GIS allows its user to view the world in a very specific way, and the following is an excellent example of the power of GIS.

My Advanced Coastal GIS course recently presented me with a fictitious but realistic problem; from an engineering perspective, asses the region surrounding Nicoya Bay, Costa Rica, for sites which are suitable for shrimp aquaculture.Thinking from an engineering perspective, we factored in building cost, shipping distance to a major city, proximity to both fresh (river) and salt water (10-25 ppt) and site elevation. Additionally, we decided to narrow down our site selections by opting to use already built Salinas (salt flats) for potential shrimp aquaculture.  Choosing a Salinas will lower building costs and reduce the risk of unforeseen problems inherent in new building locations.