MACURISA2018

The combination of Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy over such a short period of time was a game changer for many New Jersey communities.  With Hurricane Irene, historic inland flooding throughout the State had prompted planners and water resource managers working in riparian areas to pay focused attention on measures that could be implemented to mitigate high impact flooding from regularly occurring storm events.  Following Irene and Sandy, the concept of “resilience” became a pressing and operative priority for many New Jersey municipalities.  Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy provided a mechanism to begin the tough conversations with communities in New Jersey about how to understand their risks to future storm events.  A team at Rutgers University with acknowledgements to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management, developed a 3D elevation model of all homes, businesses, and infrastructure in Ocean County shoreline communities located within current A and V Zones of the Preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs).  An online viewer was developed to visualize the mobile-based LiDAR that was collected in these areas.  First floor estimations were then calculated and examined against existing elevations from an individual property’s elevation certificate.  These data can then be viewed alongside previous damage data (NFIP, Substantial Damages) and projected flood hazard data to understand which properties are at risk from future storm events.