Modelling and observations of wave overtopping flooding on a Southern California Beach

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Timu Gallien, Robert Guza

Friday 3 july 2015

14:15 - 14:30h at Oceania Foyer (level 0)

Themes: (T) Flood risk management and adaptation, (ST) Flooding along in rivers and coasts

Parallel session: 16L. Flood risk - Flooding

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In January 2014, waves ran up and overtopped a southern California beach causing localized backshore flooding. SWAN and XBeach are used to estimate overtopping rates that are coupled to a two dimensional nonlinear shallow water model simulating backshore flooding. Predictions are evaluated against the observed flood extent. Random realizations of XBeach had similar maximum runup, however corresponding overtopping rates are extremely sensitive to runup elevation. Maximum runup elevation and overtopping rates were strongly dependent on XBeach initialization depth.