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Discover how FloodWise™ empowers coastal communities to anticipate storm surge, sea-level rise, astronomical tides (such as king tides), and compound flooding several days in advance, delivering street-level forecasts and actionable intelligence to protect lives, infrastructure, and critical assets.
Across the United States, our coasts are home to some of our most vital natural, economic, and cultural resources. Yet as coastal populations grow and development intensifies, more people, homes, businesses, and infrastructure are put at risk of more frequent and intense flood events.
Coastal communities today face not one flood risk, but many. Storm surge, wave action, sea-level rise, nuisance tidal flooding, king tides, and compound flooding all converge along our shorelines. Shifting climate patterns and increased development are accelerating these threats, while aging infrastructure and strained drainage systems amplify their impacts.
Join us as we explore how FloodWise™ stands as a vital operational decision-support system for coastal municipalities, emergency response teams, and flood management professionals.
The Growing Complexity of Coastal Flood Risk
Flood risk in coastal environments is fundamentally different from inland flooding. While riverine and pluvial systems are largely driven by rainfall and watershed dynamics, coastal communities must contend with a constantly shifting interface between land and sea. Here, multiple forces converge, creating layered and compounding hazards that demand sophisticated understanding and proactive management.
Storm Surge and Wave Action
Storm surge is among the most destructive coastal hazards. Driven inland by hurricane-force winds, storm surge can raise water levels by 20 feet or more during major storm events. When combined with intense wave action, it becomes a fast-moving, force-driven event capable of reshaping shorelines within hours.
The impacts are immediate and severe. Surge and breaking waves can undermine foundations, collapse structures, and damage bridges, seawalls, and utilities. Low-lying areas may flood within minutes, reducing evacuation time and overwhelming response systems. Critical infrastructure, such as water treatment plants, lift stations, substations, and transportation corridors, can fail under hydraulic and debris loading, while dunes and beaches may be stripped away, increasing long-term vulnerability.
Storm surge is not simply elevated water; it’s dynamic, force-driven flooding that physically alters both the built and natural environment.
Sea-Level Rise and Tidal Flooding
Unlike the sudden onset of storm surge, sea-level rise is a gradual yet accelerating shift in baseline coastal conditions. As oceans rise, routine high tides now reach elevations that were once uncommon, driving more frequent tidal – or “nuisance” – flooding.
These events can occur on clear days, disrupting traffic, infiltrating stormwater systems, and degrading roads and foundations. Over the past two decades, the frequency of high-tide, or nuisance, flooding has risen by more than 200 percent nationwide, with even sharper increases across parts of the Southeast Atlantic and Western Gulf. What were once sporadic disruptions have become recurring operational challenges, placing sustained pressure on infrastructure and coastal communities.
By elevating the starting point for all coastal events, sea-level rise intensifies the impacts of storm surge, heavy rainfall, and seasonal high tides alike.
King Tides / Perigean Spring Tides
King tides, or perigean spring tides, occur when the gravitational forces of the Sun and Moon align while the Moon is closest to Earth. Though natural and predictable, king tides now regularly cause flooding in areas that historically remained dry.
However, their significance extends beyond short-term inconvenience. King tides offer a visible preview of future average high tide levels under continued sea-level rise. Streets that flood during king tides today may experience similar water levels during ordinary high tides in the coming decades.
For coastal communities, king tides are no longer anomalies; they are indicators of emerging baseline conditions.
Compound Flooding
Perhaps the most complex and consequential coastal threat is compound flooding, the interaction of multiple flood drivers, such as storm surge, heavy rainfall, high tides, and elevated river levels, occurring simultaneously or in sequence.
For example, a single storm may push storm surge inland while intense rainfall overwhelms drainage systems. Elevated tides can block outfalls, preventing stormwater from discharging to the ocean, while swollen rivers struggle to empty into surge-impacted estuaries. The result is flooding that is deeper, more widespread, and more prolonged than any individual driver would produce alone.
These interconnected events challenge traditional flood management approaches. Measures designed to protect against one hazard can exacerbate another if not carefully coordinated. For coastal agencies, these interactions are not theoretical scenarios; they are operational realities that demand integrated forecasting, infrastructure coordination, and a forward-looking approach.
An Operational Imperative
The evolving complexity of coastal flood risk stems from the combined influence of shifting climate patterns and human development. Rising sea levels, intensifying storms, expanded construction in low-lying areas, modified waterways, and aging infrastructure are collectively reshaping how and where flooding occurs. These interconnected factors demand a more advanced and coordinated approach to flood management.
While understanding coastal flood drivers is essential, effective response requires more than situational awareness. Decisions such as road closures, pump activation, resource staging, and evacuation planning depend on precise, localized forecasts delivered with sufficient lead time to act.
FloodWise™ was developed to meet this need, bridging the gap between technical hydrologic and hydraulic (H&H) modeling and real-world operational decision-making, equipping coastal communities with the forward-looking intelligence necessary to protect lives and infrastructure.
Hyperlocal, Actionable Coastal Decisions
Effective flood response in coastal environments hinges on precision. FloodWise™ delivers highly localized forecasts at the street, house, and critical infrastructure level, providing reliable insight several days in advance. This matters profoundly in coastal environments, where response decisions are inherently asset-specific and time-sensitive:
Coastal leaders must determine which roadways should be closed first, where pump stations require staging, which neighborhoods need sandbag distribution, and which facilities are at greatest risk of inundation. FloodWise™ translates complex hydrologic and hydraulic model outputs into a clear and user-friendly dashboard, identifying forecasted impacts at specific assets.
Rather than relying on raw hydrographs or technical inundation grids, emergency managers see risk communicated in operational terms – streets, facilities, neighborhoods, and infrastructure – enabling faster, more confident decision-making.
Built for Coastal Drivers and Compound Flooding
A defining strength of FloodWise™ is its strategic support for coastal and compound flooding conditions. Through integration with NOAA coastal ocean forecasts, the system incorporates tidal dynamics, storm surge projections, real-time and forecasted rainfall, and inland hydrologic responses into a unified forecasting framework.
This integrated modeling approach allows jurisdictions to anticipate the interaction between rainfall and elevated coastal water levels, the staple of compound flooding in estuarine and coastal systems.
FloodWise™ also supports far more than hurricane response. It provides advanced forecasting during king tides, seasonal high-tide cycles, convective rainfall events, and prolonged coastal storm systems. For communities managing recurrent nuisance flooding, this continuous intelligence transforms episodic reaction into informed preparedness.
24/7/365 Operational Readiness
Coastal flooding is not confined to business hours, and neither is FloodWise™. The platform operates continuously – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – automatically retrieving rainfall data in hourly increments and integrating forecast precipitation to forecast evolving flood conditions.
Designed as a real-time operational platform, FloodWise™ equips decision-makers with clear answers to the questions that matter most:
- Where will flooding occur?
- How deep will it be?
- How long will it persist?
This constant situational awareness aligns directly with the needs of public works departments, stormwater utilities, and emergency management teams operating in dynamic coastal environments
Meeting Coastal Agencies Where They Are
Many coastal municipalities have already invested in hydraulic and hydrologic models (H&H) such as StormWise™, SWMM, or HEC-RAS. FloodWise™ is intentionally positioned as a flexible overlay that repurposes existing models and workflows, transforming them into real-time and forecast-capable systems.
By repurposing established models and workflows into real-time, forecast-capable tools, FloodWise™ lowers barriers to adoption and accelerates implementation, allowing agencies to enhance and leverage prior investments.
What This Means for Coastal Communities
For coastal municipalities and emergency management teams, FloodWise™ enables a fundamental shift from reactive response to proactive resilience. With several days of lead time, coastal agencies can pre-stage personnel and equipment, secure vulnerable infrastructure, coordinate interdepartmental response, and communicate risk clearly to stakeholders.
By translating complex coastal and hydrologic data into asset-level visualizations, the system ensures that risk is communicated in the same language agencies use to manage daily operations. Rainfall, tidal conditions, and storm surge are forecast together, allowing jurisdictions to manage compound flooding with greater clarity and coordination.
Continuous monitoring supports both recurring nuisance flooding and major storm events, ensuring communities maintain situational awareness year-round, and integrated “what-if” scenario capabilities further strengthen preparedness by allowing agencies to test response strategies before floodwaters arrive.
The outcome is a more agile, informed, and resilient approach to coastal flood management, one that protects lives, preserves infrastructure, and stabilizes local economies.
Turning Coastal Risk into Coastal Resilience
Without timely and accurate forecasts, coastal communities face higher tolls, greater financial losses, and widespread infrastructure damage. FloodWise™ transforms flood forecasting from a retrospective assessment into a forward-looking operational strategy.
By providing precise insight into the location, depth, and duration of flooding days in advance, the platform empowers coastal municipalities to act decisively before impacts unfold.
FloodWise™ is more than a forecasting system. It is an operational resilience solution, purpose-built to safeguard communities, strengthen infrastructure systems, and support informed leadership in an era of rising waters and increasingly complex coastal hazards.
To learn more about FloodWiseTM and its capabilities, visit: https://streamline.tech/floodwise
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