The water surge during a hurricane is an important load on coastal structures such as building and bridges for which they must be designed. This project will collect data from submerged pressure gauges that were installed in the paths of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. This data will be analyzed using low-pass filters to define the surge time series, and spectral analysis combined with linear wave theory to define the wave time series. This is for the first time that such data have been collected. This data will provide important information to improve the understanding of hurricane surges and their effect on the coastal structures. It will help in the development of hurricane induced surge heights and water pressure load models on structures such as coastal buildings and bridges. This information will be useful to governmental planners and regulators, numerical modelers, and geologists and engineers for the design of coastal structures and to correlate the predicted and observed damage during a hurricane.
