Some Thoughts on Joint Probability Method (JPM) for Estimating Storm Surges

• Activity Number: 661 - The Climate Extremes Program at SAMSI
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2018 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Whitney Huang*
• Companies: Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute
• Keywords: Strom surge; Extreme Value Analysis; Computer Experiment; Uncertainty quantification; Hurricanes

Abstract

The estimation of hurricane-induced storm surges is critically important to quantifying risks in coastal areas. The join probability method (JPM) combined with hydrodynamic simulations is currently the recommended method by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for calculating the magnitude of surges in terms of 10-, 50-, 100-, and 500-year return levels. The purpose of this talk is to i) introduce the main idea of JPM in the hurricane surges context; ii) describe the optimal sampling strategies in JPM as a means to reduce computational burden of running hydrodynamic simulations; iii) make a clearer link between the JPM and the tail-modeling aspects of extreme value analysis.