UTC 2022 Funding - Cycle 2 Research Projects

Project Number: CY2-OU-01
Project Title: Enhancing Oklahoma’s Transportation Infrastructure Network Against Floods: From Precipitation Information to Structural Damage and Road Closures – a Pilot Study
Performing Institution: University of Oklahoma
Principal Investigators: Kendra M. Dresback, Pierre-Emmanuel Kirstetter and Aikaterini P. Kyprioti
Proposed Start and End Date: 10/01/2024 to 09/30/2025
Project Description: Flooding has unfolded as another pressing natural hazard that causes significant damage and disturbances to transportation infrastructure that is central in any recovery effort. With current trends demonstrating an increase in the frequency of more extreme weather phenomena, flooding impact is expected to grow significantly in both urban and rural settings of Oklahoma and the broader Region 6. While extreme events have been traditionally accommodated in the design of any transportation project by using statistical, stationary estimates about the design water level and flashiness, such approach is no longer valid under climate extremes. Efforts should be made in shifting the design and restoration processes of existing infrastructure towards updated estimates that better capture new extremes and their impact on the transportation infrastructure. In particular, state and interstate highways are typically designed with stricter performance criteria than local rural support infrastructure. Addressing these gaps in the designing process requires a comprehensive tool that can assess flooding risk with high resolution and high accuracy by identifying locations within an urban or rural environment where the network should be improved. The proposed project will focus on providing a complete and transferable-to-any-region framework that estimates from flood levels based on weather radar precipitation all the way up to identifying transportation infrastructure that will be challenged to perform at a service level or to maintain its structural integrity under extreme loads. Data-driven models that relate flood characteristics with the spatial distribution of precipitation and are trained with physics-based hydraulic simulations will be leveraged to provide fast and accurate estimates of the flood levels at high spatial resolution. The pilot study demonstrating the framework’s capabilities will be developed over an area of Oklahoma that highlights local transportation infrastructure and its resilience. Probabilistic flood estimates will offer a high-resolution and information-rich vulnerability assessment for the investigated community. This will be important for state and local stakeholder decision-making on available funds and prioritization of local infrastructure necessitating interventions to remain operational.
Click here to learn more