Module 3 - Coastal Flooding

Hurricane Sandy made landfall in October 2012 in Mantoloking, New Jersey, resulting in extensive destruction. This week’s module involved downloading two LAZ files from the NOAA website, corresponding to the conditions before and after Hurricane Sandy. 

I utilized the Spatial ETL tool to convert both files into LAS format. The analysis of the two Lidar datasets, collected prior to and after the hurricane, reveals notable alterations. A color gradient is utilized, with low values represented in red and high values in blue. The dataset acquired post-hurricane predominantly displays red, indicating erosion, and a high value of 38.48, a decrease from 39.49 in the pre-hurricane dataset, signifying damage and changes in elevation.

In the following step, I applied the LAS dataset to TIN tool, followed by the TIN to Raster tool to create DEMs. The final step was to utilize the Raster Calculator to subtract the pre-Sandy raster from the post-Sandy raster dataset. The outcome illustrates the changes observed between the pre and post-event images. 

 

Screen shot of the change area that has significant changes due to the hurricane. The red areas indicate where erosion has occurred, where as the blue area signify regions where sand and debris have accumulated resulting from storm surge and flooding.