Fact Sheet
August 29, 2006
DOE
SC Provides 800,000 Hours of Supercomputing
Time
to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
to Improve Gulf Coast Hurricane Defenses
In 2006, the Department of Energy’s
Office of Science made two separate allocations
of 400,000 processor hours of supercomputing
time at the National Energy Research Scientific
Computing Center (NERSC) to the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers for studying ways to improve hurricane
defenses along the Gulf Coast. The research
is being done in cooperation with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
As hurricanes move from the ocean toward land,
the force of the storm causes the seawater to
rise as it surges inland. The Corps of Engineers
used its DOE supercomputer allocations to create
revised models for predicting the effects of
100-year storm-surges – the worst case
scenario based on 100 years of hurricane data
– along the Gulf Coast. In particular,
simulations were generated for the critical
five parish area of Louisiana surrounding New
Orleans and the Lower Mississippi River. These
revised effects, known as “storm-surge
elevations,” are serving as the basis
of design for levee repairs and improvements
currently being designed and constructed by
the Corps of Engineers in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina’s destruction in the New Orleans
Metro Area.
Additionally, Gulf Coast Recovery Maps were
generated for Southern Louisiana based on FEMA’s
revised analysis of the frequency of hurricanes
and estimates of the resulting waves. While
still preliminary, these maps are being used
on an advisory basis by communities currently
rebuilding from the 2005 storms. Final maps
are expected to be completed later this year.
The Corps used its first NERSC allocation,
announced in February, to conduct Storm Surge
simulations using the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC)
coastal model and Empirical Simulation Technique
(EST) to study both how high the storm-surge
waters would rise and how often such surges
would occur.
![Overview simulation showing elevated storm surges along the Gulf Coast.](image1.JPG)
Overview simulation showing elevated storm
surges along the Gulf Coast.
![Simulation detail showing highest surge elevation (in red) striking Biloxi, Miss. New Orleans is the dark blue crescent to the lower left of Biloxi.](image2.JPG)
Simulation detail showing highest surge
elevation (in red) striking Biloxi, Miss. New
Orleans is the dark blue crescent to the lower
left of Biloxi.
The Corps of Engineers plans to use the second
NERSC allocation, announced in July, to finalize
the revised stage frequency relationships by
the end of 2006. Having access to the NERSC
supercomputer will allow the Corps of Engineers
to create more detailed models of the effects
of Hurricane Rita and other storms along the
Texas-Louisiana coasts. Increased detail will
give the Corps of Engineers and FEMA more information
about the local effects of such storms. For
example, storm surge elevations are greatly
influenced by local features such as roads and
elevated railroads. Representing these details
in the model greatly improves the degree to
which computed elevations match observed storm
surge high-water marks and allows the Corps
to make better recommendations to protect against
such surges.
At NERSC, the Corps of Engineers team is running
their simulations on an 888-processor IBM cluster
called “Bassi.” The cluster is powered
by IBM’s newest Power5 processors and
is specially tuned for scientific computation.
The Corps’ simulations typically use 128
to 256 processors and run for two-and-a-half
to four-and-a-half hours per simulation batch.
The Corps of Engineers team is also running
hurricane simulations on the DoD Major Shared
Resource computers at the Engineering Research
and Development Center (ERDC). Due to the tremendous
computational requirements of these hurricane
protection projects and urgent timelines, only
by working together and using both DOE and DoD
resources, will the Corps be able to provide
high quality engineering solutions.
As a result of the runs, the Corps determined
that the applications produced incorrect results
at topographic boundaries in some instances
and codes were modified to improve the accuracy
of the results. For example, the runs at NERSC
have improved the Corps’ ability to model
the effects of vegetation and land use on storm
surges which propagate far inland, as Hurricane
Rita did on Sept. 24, 2005.
About the NERSC Center
Established in 1974, the NERSC Center is DOE’s
flagship center for unclassified computing and
provides systems, services and expertise to
advance computational science throughout the
DOE research community. NERSC is managed by
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for DOE.
For more information about the NERSC Center,
go to: http://www.nersc.gov/.
About the DOE Office of Science
DOE’s Office of Science is the single
largest supporter of basic research in the physical
sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S.
world leadership across a broad range of scientific
disciplines. The Office of Science supports
a diverse portfolio of research at more than
300 colleges and universities nationwide, manages
10 world-class national laboratories with unmatched
capabilities for solving complex interdisciplinary
scientific problems, and builds and operates
the world’s finest suite of scientific
facilities and instruments used annually by
more than 19,000 researchers to extend the frontiers
of all areas of science. For more information,
go to: http://www.sc.doe.gov/
Media contact: Jon Bashor, jbashor@lbl.gov,
510-486-5849
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