Barrier island overwash and breaching are caused by inundation from ocean storm surge and waves or from elevated levels of bay water. According to numerical simulations, a developed barrier island in New Jersey experienced major overwash and some breaching during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 as a result of an extreme rise in bay surge within Barnegat Bay 6 h after peak ocean surge. In this study, a sensitivity analysis was conducted on the effects of peak bay-surge timing and magnitude on the morphological change in the presence and absence of a seawall. Results from the numerical model indicate that the timing of the peak bay surge in the northern portion of Barnegat Bay was a major contributor to the damage observed at nearby locations along the barrier island. By shifting bay-surge timing, island erosion was reduced up to 130%, mostly on the back barrier, the location of the majority of coastal infrastructure. Additionally, simulations show that a seawall protected the island from severe erosion by preventing ocean and bay surge from flowing freely across the island. In the absence of a seawall, the elevation of the island was significantly eroded under Hurricane Sandy conditions, where erosion was exacerbated by increases in bay-surge magnitude.

When Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico in September, 2017, it devastated the island’s critical infrastructures, including the well-documented total loss of electric power systems. The strong interdependencies or associations among critical infrastructures in modern society meant that the failure of power systems propagated to and exacerbated the failure of other infrastructure systems. Moreover, these associations impact systems recovery just as they impact system failure. This study is a follow-up of previous research by the first author on Hurricane Maria. In this research authors extracted and quantified the recovery associations of Hurricane Fiona (September 2022) made landfall in Puerto Rico and inflicted considerable damage to its critical infrastructures. The recovery efforts following the disaster provided an opportunity to follow up on the previous research and examine the recovery associations. Significant money and efforts have gone into upgrading the infrastructures of Puerto Rico to make them more resilient to natural disasters such as hurricanes or tropical storms following Hurricane Maria. This paper explores the new recovery resiliency characteristics of Puerto Rico’s critical infrastructure systems (CISs) that the recovery efforts following Hurricane Fiona illustrate. This research shows that the power systems and other CISs of Puerto Rico are much more resilient when compared to their state of resiliency in 2017. Moreover, examining the recovery interdependencies reveals that some of the CISs are strongly dependent on power systems recovery. Outcomes of this study suggest that CIS relationships based on recovery data from Puerto Rico, are transferable to similar disaster-prone areas such as the Caribbean islands or other island nations, as they have similar characteristics and challenges.

Barrier islands span 10% of the world’s coastlines and dominate along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts in the USA routinely exposed to storm surge. These islands serve as buffers betw...

Adaptation pathways are responsive planning tools intended to help decision-makers incorporate uncertainty of a future scenario while optimizing the use of their resources. In this project, an adaptation pathway was generated for a developed barrier island community, Dauphin Island, Alabama, USA. The project period was October 2019 to April 2022, with community engagement beginning in January 2020. Initial meetings were held with the community to identify vulnerable locations and co-develop adaptation strategies that were evaluated throughout the project. The effectiveness of adaptation strategies to reduce damage was estimated with a process-based numerical model, XBeach, which simulated inundation and morphological change due to Hurricane Nate (2017) and several sea-level rise scenarios. Depending on the Dauphin Island priority area, “damage” was defined as saltwater contamination in a freshwater lake, sand deposits on Dauphin Island’s main through route, or decreased sediment volume. When damage was sustained for a given strategy and sea-level rise scenario, a “tipping point” was reached and triggered the implementation of another strategy. Adaptation pathways were generated for two focus locations, with one location having two tipping points resulting in two pathways. This project revealed adaptation pathways are dependent on definitions of tipping points and location even within the same community. Community engagement revealed vulnerable locations that were previously unrealized and identified ‘reasonable’ or ‘unreasonable’ adaptation strategies based on community needs and desires. While the pathways produced for Dauphin Island are likely not transferrable to other locations, both findings are key to effective application of the adaptation pathways approach and generating a pathway accepted by the community.