Storm Surge Bathymetric Modeling and Risk Assessment in the United States Caribbean Territories

Storm surge from hurricane phenomena are destructive events that inundate coastlines with elevated levels of stormwater, causing extensive damage to communities and infrastructure. With increasing hurricane and storm surge severity due to climate change, better understanding and mitigating storm surge impacts is critical for future disaster resilience. While the complex mechanisms of storm surge formation are generally understood, applications of this knowledge combined with geospatial analysis tailored to regional characteristics remain underexplored in disaster mitigation planning, particularly for disadvantaged communities.This paper identifies and analyzes a select number of regions across the historically underserved United States Caribbean territories using GIS analysis of NOAA datasets and Python scripts characterizing meteorological data from hurricanes to identify locations most vulnerable to coastal inundation. In conjunction with regional risk assessment, Population dynamics and demographics are then considered to determine how vulnerable select communities are in the event of severe storm surge effects, amounting to a comprehensive location-based ranking of relative storm surge risk. Our findings provide a novel assessment method of identifying both geographic and demographic vulnerabilities in coastal regions, despite some regions lacking sufficient data for an exhaustive evaluation. In establishing a robust methodological framework for coastal risk analysis, this paper highlights the need for more easily accessible global databases to contribute to informed, science-based disaster preparation strategies.