Elevator Pitch
The ADCIRC Surge Guidance System is a portable real-time operational storm surge forecasting framework, forged over 15 Atlantic hurricane seasons, that is used to deliver critical information to emergency managers on federal, state, and local levels in La, TX, and NC & Feds like FEMA, NOAA, and DHS.
Description
The ADCIRC Surge Guidance System (ASGS), first discussed formally in 2008, is a portable real-time operational storm surge forecasting framework. It continues to be forged and honed with each passing Atlantic hurricane seasons since 2008. ASGS has been used to deliver critical, time sensitive information to emergency managers on federal, state, and local levels in Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolina and within groups such FEMA, NOAA, and DHS. Over these years it has saved millions of dollars in time, property, and emergency assets. It has also likely saved many lives1. This talk discusses its origins as a collaboration between LSU and UNC in the wake of interest in such systems after Hurricane Katrina (2005), to its first real test during Hurricane Gustav2 (2008, path shown in Figure 5), and up to the modern day. ASGS has been used successfully to assist the community since then. This talk also discusses the technical aspects of the system: the essential core of the system, the ADCIRC finite element coast ocean model; how the user experience has been tailored for real-time operations, and the technical decisions that have been made leading directly to its success as a robust and adaptable framework for operational use. Most relevant for the intended audience is that is shown, i how using Perl, Bash shell scripting, and standard Unix tools has made all of this possible.
Notes
This effort is intimately tied ot Texas, I am the Texas “operator” and when a hurricane is threatening any part of the Texas coast, I run this on the University of Texas’ high performance computing machines at TACC (in Austin). I’ve given simlar talks at the 2023 Perl Conference (Las Vegas) and published a paper on it via the Science Perl Journal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlnVfznTSOA https://github.com/StormSurgeLive/asgs (I am wwlwpd on Github)