Module 5: Hazards - Coastal Flooding

     Living on a barrier island in the midst of hurricane season, this week's lab was particularly fascinating. We used the LAS Dataset to TIN and TIN to Raster tools to create DEM's from LAS files. These DEM's were then run through the Raster Calculator to create a raster file displaying the change in elevation along the New Jersey coast before and after Hurricane Sandy.

     We were then tasked with determining the areas of Cape May county New Jersey that would flood in the event of a two meter tall storm surge. This was done utilizing the Reclassify, Raster to Polygon, and Intersect tools. The percentage of the county that would flood was found with areas determined by calculating the geometry of fields in the attribute tables of the Cape May county and flooded Cape May county layers.

     A little closer to home, we were next required to find the areas of Collier County, Florida that would be inundated by a one meter storm surge. We were working with a USGS DEM and a DEM produced from LiDAR. I found the flooded areas of the county by employing the Reclassify, Region Group, and Raster to Polygon tools. The number of various types of buildings that would be affected by storm surge was found via spatial joins and the Select by Attributes tool. Finally, the Select by Attributes tool was used to find discrepancies between the two DEM's regarding which buildings would be affected.