Integration of Geographic Information System and system dynamics for assessment of the impacts of storm damage on coastal communities - Case study: Chabahar, Iran

In this study Geographic Information System (GIS) and System Dynamics (SD) were used for assessment of the impacts of storm surges on coastal communities. Storm Surges and coastal flooding were simulated using Advanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) and Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) numerical models, and spatial features of water depths, wave heights and velocities were imported into the ESRI ArcMap using Arc-StormSurge toolbox. SD and GIS were integrated to develop a Spatial System Dynamics (SSD), and applied as a single modeling framework to simulate feedback-based storm surge impacts in time and space. Total damages (direct + indirect) of storm surge events on the community elements were simulated in the SD model. In the SD model, the direct impacts were imported from GIS model through data dynamic exchange procedure, and indirect damages were considered as an estimation of related direct damage of elements in the first day of storm event, which decreases exponentially in the subsequent days. The developed model was applied to the case of Chabahar city, south-east of Iran. Seven storm scenarios were defined based on historical data and hydrodynamic modeling, and the SSD model was run for them. The best estimation of total damages was obtained after 8 days of SSD model simulation, in comparison with reference data. The assessments showed exponential trends of maximum water level rise (MWLR) in relation to the total damage estimation. The functional form of MWLR and estimated total damages was suggested to be used as a fast prediction tool for rapid assessment of storm damages.