Speakers
Chris Massey, PhD
Dr. Chris Massey received his PhD in Mathematics from Virginia Tech in 2002 with an emphasis on finite element methods and a posteriori error estimates. He then held a National Research Council Postdoc position with the Naval Research Laboratory’s Oceanography Division, which he joined full time in 2004 and performed research and development on next generation coastal ocean circulation models. He has since served as a Research Mathematician at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) at the Engineer Research and Development Center’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) since 2008. He is an internationally recognized expert in the development and application of coastal and riverine numerical models, model coupling and system integration, storm surge modeling and unstructured finite element meshing procedures. Dr. Massey maintains active research in numerical methods and applications to storm surge, waves, river flows, sediments and meshing techniques. He is also the CHL lead for the community based numerical technology modernization effort that guides CHL into the next generation numerical software interfaces, model designs, and complex workflows.
Dr. Massey is the team lead for the Coastal Storm Modeling Team and has led or co-led several high profile modeling efforts of large regional coastal storm surge and wave hazards studies that are important for not only USACE Smart Planning, but are used by other federal agencies as well as state and local communities. These studies include the North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study (NACCS), the Coastal Texas Study (CTXS), the South Atlantic Coastal Study (SACS), the Louisiana Coastal Study (LACPRA) and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI).
Dr. Massey is a member of the multiagency Coastal Coupling Community of Practice advisory group and is a member of the Department of Defense’s, High Performance Computing Modernization Program’s User Advocacy Group.
Presentation Description
Coastal Storm Surge & Wave Modeling and its Implications for USACE Projects in a Changing ClimateThe US Army Corps of Engineers builds, operates and maintains many coastal storm risk management systems that contain surge barriers, breakwaters, and navigation gates to name just a few features. High fidelity numerical models for storm surge and waves are employed within a statistical framework to provide a risk based hazards assessment and a cost benefit analysis as part of the design process. It is important to consider future climate conditions to include local sea level rise rates, changes to land use/land classification and changes to storm conditions in terms of severity/duration and frequency when performing these studies. This talk will discuss current modeling and statistical hazards approaches and how changing climate conditions are currently considered during coastal storm flood risk management studies.
