Global Location-Invariant Peak Storm Surge Prediction

Abstract: Storm surge is a significant threat to coastal communities across the globe, responsible for loss of life and enormous property damage. Consequently, significant efforts have been expended to develop high-fidelity physics-based models for storm surge prediction. However, such models are often extremely computationally expensive and require supercomputing resources. In recent years, there has been a growing trend towards data-driven surrogate models, which approximate the capabilities of high-fidelity models at a tiny fraction of the computational cost. Most datasets of high-fidelity storm surge model output are limited to narrow geographical regions, with the majority focused on the continental United States and China. This trend is reflected in the scope of existing storm surge surrogate models. In this work, we present a novel dataset for training storm surge surrogate models with global applicability. The dataset consists of high-resolution peak surge output from the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model for over 15,000 landfalling synthetic storms distributed across the world. To the author's knowledge, it is the largest dataset of its kind ever assembled, and is unique in its global scope. We additionally present a machine learning model for peak storm surge based on computer vision architecture. The model is trained on our new global dataset and can accurately predict maximum storm surge in disparate geographical regions - including those for which few or no surrogate models exist. Both the dataset and accompanying model are publicly available, with the aim to support the development of additional storm surge models with global reach.