Contribute to, and advocating for:
a complete national set of bathymetric data
definitions, metadata and data access
Rick Luettich
David Welch
| Rick Luettich | Co-Chair | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences | Director, Center for Natural Hazards Resilience |
| David Welch | Co-Chair | NOAA NWS Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center | Development and Operations Hydrologist |
| Christopher Amante | Member | Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at UC Boulder; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | Geospatial Research Scientist; CUDEM |
| Shintaro Bunya | Member | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences | Research Scientist at Center for Natural Hazards Resilience |
| Taher Chegini | Member | Dewberry; RIMORPHIS | Solutions Architect, Researcher |
| Amanda Cox | Member | Saint Louis University School of Science and Engineering; RIMORPHIS | Professor of Civil Engineering |
| Matt Cushing | Member | USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science Center | Geographer |
| Jeff Danielson | Member | USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science Center | CoNED Applications Project Chief |
| Clint Dawson | Member | University of Texas Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences | Chair Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics |
| Ibrahim Demir | Member | Tulane University School of Science and Engineering; RIMORPHIS | Professor, River-Coastal Science and Engineering |
| Sayan Dey | Member | Saint Louis University; RIMORPHIS | Research Scientist |
| Derek Giardino | Member | NOAA NWS Office of Water Prediction Geo-Intelligence Division | Flood Inundation Mapping Program Lead |
| Lauren Grimley | Member | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences | Dept. of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences Postdoctoral Researcher |
| Ebrahim Hamidi | Member | North Carolina State University Coastal Hazards Lab | Postdoctoral fellow |
| Liliana Hernandez | Member | Contractor with Lynker in support of NOAA NWS Office of Water Prediction Geo-Intelligence Division | Hydrologic GIS Analyst |
| Younghun Kang | Member | University of Texas Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences | Postdoctoral Fellow Computational Hydraulics Group |
| Venkatesh Merwade | Member | Purdue University Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering; RIMORPHIS | Professor of Civil and Construciton Engineering |
| J. Toby Minear | Member | Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; RIMORPHIS | Research Faculty |
| Marian Muste | Member | University of Iowa College of Engineering; RIMORPHIS | Research Engineer |
| Geoffrey Walters | Member | NOAA NWS Northwest (Portland, OR) River Forecast Center | Development and Operations Hydrologist |
September 2025 Meeting with Cameron Ackerman (USACE/Institute for Water Resources/Hydrolic Engineering Center): Georeferencing a 1D HEC-RAS Model
August 2025 Meeting with RIMORPHIS: Intro to the Bathymetric Data Working Group
June 16, 2025 Working Group Meeting: Lauren Grimley presented Overview of Elevation Data in HEC-RAS 1D Models
May 19, 2025 Working Group Meeting: Lauren Grimley presented Resolving the Bathymetry of Rivers in Eastern North Carolina for Flood Modeling
Cushing, W. M., & Tyler, D. J. (2024). Mitigating Disparate Elevation Differences between Adjacent Topobathymetric Data Models Using Binary Code. Remote Sensing, 16(18), 3418. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16183418
Modaresi Rad, A., Johnson, J. M., Ghahremani, Z., Coll, J., & Frazier, N. (2024). Enhancing river channel dimension estimation: A machine learning approach leveraging the National Water Model, hydrographic networks, and landscape characteristics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Machine Learning and Computation, 1(4), e2024JH000173.
Open access python code for riverbed interpolation on GitHub
FEMA's Estimated Base Flood Elevation (estBFE) Viewer and How2 Find the Right HEC-RAS Model PDF
The River Morphology Information System (RIMORPHIS) is a user-friendly, scalable, data and information system for river morphology research
Louisiana: Louisiana Watershed Initiative Statewide Data and Modeling Program
North and South Carolina:
DesignSafe Data Depo Repository for Topobathymetric Digital Elevation Models (DEM) for Flood Modeling in the Carolinas
North Carolina Flood Risk Information System (FRIS)
Texas: Harris County Model & Map Management (M3) System is an interactive mapping tool developed by the Harris County Flood Control District
Related Research Article: Grimley, L. E., Sebastian, A., Leijnse, T., Eilander, D., Ratcliff, J., & Luettich, R. (2025). Determining the relative contributions of runoff, coastal, and compound processes to flood exposure across the Carolinas during Hurricane Florence. Water Resources Research, 61, e2023WR036727. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR036727
Topobathymetric DEM of Carolinas
Related Pre-print: Cassalho, Felicio and Mani, Soroosh and Ye, Fei and Zhang, Yinglong and Moghimi, Saeed, Ocsmesh and an End-to-End Workflow for Fully Automatic Mesh Generation with Application to Compound Flood Studies. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5226658.
Related Paper describing tools used in the presentation:
Fei Ye, Linlin Cui, Yinglong Zhang, Zhengui Wang, Saeed Moghimi, Edward Myers, Greg Seroka, Alan Zundel, Soroosh Mani, John G.W. Kelley, A parallel Python-based tool for meshing watershed rivers at continental scale, Environmental Modelling & Software, Volume 166, 2023, 105731, ISSN 1364-8152, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2023.105731.
Online documentation hosted on github describing the meshing process for TWL studies.
Email us at: coastal.coupling@noaa.gov
