(bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) - We're at the Emergency Management Agency today in Cranston.

I'm here with Dr. Austin Becker, and as we look at the board behind us, we can see some of the work that you've created with a format called Rhode Island Champ.

And can you tell me what Rhode Island C.H.A.M.P.

is all about?

- Yeah, so this is the Rhode Island Coastal Hazards Assessment Modeling and Prediction tool.

And essentially this is a tool that brings together predictions about hazards such as flooding from hurricane storm surge, wind and waves associated with coastal storms.

So those are the hazards.

It brings those predictions together with the things that people on the ground care about and are worried about.

So if we have a major storm and we get five, six, seven, 10 feet of storm surge, why is that a problem for, in this case, critical infrastructure facility managers?

So we go and collect data from critical infrastructure facility managers, subject matter experts about the things that are on their facilities, the generators, the electrical transformers, the computer server rooms, et cetera.

What are the things that are on their facility that are at risk from flooding or wind impact?

And then what's the threshold at which they expect an impact to occur?

- Okay, a lot of those people will be sitting in this room on the monitors during a real emergency and they'll be looking at the information that's up on the screen, which is going to be real time information.

And that works with the modeling program that has also been created at the University of Rhode Island?

- That's correct.

So we have been working for eight years now on a Department of Homeland Security funded project which is designed to bring very local scale high resolution information and predictions to the emergency managers in the state and the municipalities that need that information for decision making.

And it all comes together in a dashboard that you can see behind us here.

And that tool allows emergency managers to go in and look at the amount of predicted flooding and wind as well as those consequences that were pre-identified by the facility managers that they're worried about in an event such as the one that may be viewed through the dashboard.

One of the unique things about this tool that we've been developing as a collaboration between the Department of Marine Affairs, the Graduate School of Oceanography, and the Coastal Resources Center is that it can be used both for real time storm predictions when there's a storm coming up the coast, but it can also be used to explore how future storms, perhaps with sea level rise and intensification, storms that have not before hit Rhode Island, but could in the future, how those types of events would trigger the same kinds of concerns that our facility managers have for the storms that we're worried about today.

So the social science end of this is collecting this qualitative data, so descriptions of what these facility managers are worried about and integrating it with the numerical storm models, both for storms of today that we could be dealing with this hurricane season and for these hypothetical storms that, you know, may occur in the future with three feet of additional sea level rise or five feet of additional sea level rise and storms that maybe don't behave in the way that previous storms have.

- And the point behind all of this is to keep people safe, to keep them informed.

- To help the emergency management community do what they already do best And that is to get that information out, to make those decisions that are gonna protect the lives and wellbeing of our residents here on Rhode Island, but also to help us understand what the future may bring.

- Yes.

- And what sorts of resilience investments we might wanna make today to reduce those risks in the future.

So this tool can help us prioritize those, help different subject matter experts, different agency representatives, facility managers.

It can help those folks understand how these impacts might affect them and also those that they depend upon.

- Sounds like a great program.

I think we're very lucky to have it.

And I wanna thank you very much for coming up here today and spending some time with us.

Much appreciated.

- A pleasure.

Thanks very much.

- Thank you.

- [Austin] All right.

- You deal with modeling and creating models that predict and show what's happening with the storms?

- Yeah, so we've been working on advancing the computer models that are currently used for forecasting hurricanes, nor'easters, what we call extreme weather.

And of course there is plenty of weather information available.

The official forecast coming from the National Weather Service and they have several different models.

They make weather forecasts.

So what been focusing on on essentially advancing the spatial resolution of those models to make them more site specific and more relevant to the people who make decisions in terms of the response to the storms or looking at the future impacts.

So that's the call what we're doing, trying to essentially, we have a down scaling, the large scale storm into the smaller scales to be more precise in making those predictions.

- And so this will actually show in real time where the wind is affecting an area that is like a forest or a pond right away on the model.

- Yeah, so absolutely.

So this system can be applied in real time and this is the key to make these predictions ahead of the storm making landfall.

- Of course this is very important when you think about Providence, when you think the port in Providence and if it does reach that level of overflowing, we think about the hurricane barrier that's in Providence and how this protects the city and the Providence riverway.

- Well, absolutely.

So the hurricane barrier is of particular importance for the city of Providence.

It was built in early '60s after the Hurricane Carol in 1954.

That was the last big storm that affected Rhode Island but the hurricane barrier has been never actually tested in big storms since then.

So because of very high resolution that we use in our model, we were able actually to integrate the hurricane barrier into our calculations.

So we can actually simulate the effectiveness of hurricane barrier when you close, what kind of impact it will have on the storm surge or if it's open.

- You know, I'm glad you're here with us in the state to help create these models which can help the state of Rhode Island tremendously.

Thank you for your work and thank you for coming up here today and talking with us.

I really appreciate it.

- [Isaac] My pleasure.

- This is the state emergency operations center, as you know.

This is a central hub for any disaster that may occur, manmade or not manmade disasters.

And all the stakeholders who would have a say in decision-making processes and how to figure out the problem of that certain disaster would come here and work on the problem.

- Okay, and you have quite a few computers.

So I'm assuming there's people from all over the state who are coming here.

- Yeah, it's a cross section of an all of government response whether it be law enforcement, fire, transportation, National Guard, us being RIEMA, mass care, health department, a bunch of different folks from all over state government to work on the disaster at hand.

- Yeah, and mitigation.

Explain that.

- So mitigation is where you're trying to obviously build up your structure or roads, you know, so you are getting out of the hazard area.

So as in like flooding your structures, I mean, you build them up, elevate them, you have them build back from the coast as well.

So there's building codes they have to follow.

There's the National Flood Insurance Program regulations that dictate on how you're supposed to build your structure depending on what flood zone you're in.

So if you are in what they call VE zone which is a velocity zone, which is along the coast and say you have a base flood elevation of 13, then your structure needs to be at BFE of 14.

You have to at least have one foot of freeboard with that elevation.

- Okay, so you're really dealing with a lot of issues before the storms approach.

- Yes.

- And I imagine that's quite a job out in the field.

- It is.

Like when people are doing the work on their homes or what, you know, they get grants, we administer grants through FEMA for the mitigation projects and we have to go out on site visits to make sure that those projects are being completed according to their scope of work as well as the, you know, the building code.

So we work with the municipalities their building officials, their planners, the CEOs of the municipalities and making sure that everything is done correctly.

- You can't help but wonder in the future what's going to happen to an entire population of people who live by the water where they keep getting pounded.

- Yeah.

- Basically.

- Yeah, and you know what?

Let's just, that's true.

- Yeah.

- But let me, let me kind of back up a little bit.

Like you've seen over the last few years, microbursts get worse and worse and worse.

- Yes.

- So big rainstorms that just came over the Labor Day, flooded out highways.

- Yeah.

- We're seeing that more and more and more and more intensely.

So, you know, when you talk about mitigation, it's not just along the coast, right?

People say, well, I live in Greenville or Smithfield or North Smithfield, I don't need flood insurance.

They're wrong.

Right?

Because really it's not the wind from, if we're talking hurricanes and we add that up, it's not really the wind that does most of the damage.

It's the water that does most of the damage.

So we're really taking a great effort to get to cities and towns, get the message out that there's money available through the federal government through us that we administer so they can do projects to help mitigate all of those things that could happen ahead of time so it's not so bad when the disaster happens.

- And of course, you know, any low lying areas I guess when it comes to a lot of rain.

But then there's also things like rivers and ponds and flooding and overflowing.

- [Marc] Sure.

- Dams, we have that in Rhode Island all over.

So we have a lot to contend with.

- Yeah.

- Not only being on the ocean but- - You've got the inland flooding- - You know, what we are made of, yeah, in this state.

- Yeah.

- And there's a lot of inland flooding that people don't think about if they're not in those areas.

- Yeah, and people's memories sometimes are short.

Melinda was here, so was I, during the floods of 2010 I was coming back from Westerly and we were on 295, and I looked down at the mall and the mall was under water.

- In the water.

- Right?

That's just right down the street from here.

I remember going to 95 and 95 was completely flooded.

There was no traffic one way or the other.

So I think people have to really understand that you don't necessarily have to live in coastal communities.

It can happen to inland as well.

- Well, I think we're very lucky to have the two of you here at the helm.

And I wanna thank you very much for letting us come up here today.

- Thanks for having us.

You're always welcome to come back and it was a pleasure to speak to you today.

- Thank you.

- You're very welcome.

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