Assessment of flood protection strategies for combined critical infrastructure failure and hurricane/storm surge events in the Meadowlands area

As a result of a wide-reaching comprehensive post-Sandy NJIT project entitled Flood Mitigation Engineering Resource Center (FMERC) , a detailed investigation of alternative measures for flood mitigation in the Meadowlands area was completed in June 2014. The project involved the assessment of flood impacts, and the evaluation of a range of structural and non-structural capital improvement measures, maintenance, operations and regulatory measures, and broad system design and redundancy measures. The basic objective of this thesis is to develop an innovative procedure for the enumeration and simulation of probability-weighted combined events, e.g., Oradell dam failure under various scenarios (sunny day, water level, etc.) along with a super storm event at various time staging levels. The approach broadens the analytical arsenal available to policy-makers for the purpose of comprehensive risk and resiliency analysis and the selection of optimal protection alternatives. The methodology includes data analysis done with the help of software like Arc GIS and Hazuz MH. Using GIS simulations, the FMERC proposed solutions e.g., Arc wall are simulated under combined event scenarios in order to identify possible modifications or adjustments for maximum risk reduction. An outcome of this research is the development of an empirical approach for simulating combined events and adaptation strategies derived to provide a more comprehensive level of protection