Project Name:
Advancing ADCIRC OperationsOther Research Participants/Partners:
Dr. Robert Twilley and Carola Kaiser (Louisiana State University), Dr. Brian Blanton (Renaissance Computing Institute), Dr. Rick Luettich (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Dr. Clint Dawson (University of Texas at Austin); Dr. Casey Dietrich, (North Carolina State University), Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), LSU Center for Computation and Technology (LSU CCT), Katelyn Costanza (CeHydro, LLC), Brett Estrade (Coastal Computing Services, LLC), Nathan Dill (Ransom Consulting, Inc.)Project Description:
Strategic Vision: Truly informed leadership for hurricane response and recovery nationwide.
Mission: Producing proven storm surge insight to empower decision-makers.
As the Transition PI team of the CRC, we have led the efforts to commercially deploy and operationalize the research products of the CRC to generate sustainable funding. To recap, in 2017, we founded Scimaritan, L3C as a not-for-profit organization and a legal vehicle to support the mission of commercial transition by bundling services into a client-centric service offering. Scimaritan is a privately owned small business, owned by the PI, domiciled in Louisiana, and it is treated as an LLC for tax purposes. It is also able to receive Program Related Investments (PRIs) from 501c3 non-profits (unlike a typical LLC). Scimaritan began collecting significant commercial revenue for real-time storm surge model guidance in Louisiana immediately and has enjoyed continuously stable positive cash flow which will continue through the 2021 season.
Over the past three hurricane seasons, Scimaritan has developed strong client loyalty and a reputation for reliability and technical excellence with our State Agency client (Louisiana CPRA). In particular, last year’s record-breaking hurricane season with over 30 named storms, including 5 landfalls in Louisiana (also a new record) was a true test for Scimaritan and for our client, LA CPRA. We passed the test of the 2020 hurricane season with flying colors and successfully renewed our CPRA contract for the 2021 hurricane season due to strong support and vigorous advocacy from LA CPRA personnel on our behalf.
In Year 7, we propose to scale Scimaritan nationwide by launching our associated brand, stormsurge.live, with new technical capabilities (including inland rainfall flood guidance for the first time) and new outreach and marketing including social media, a dedicated website with Salesforce integration, and outreach events. This is not a live website yet. We hired a web design company called Pixel Power to design it (as well as the new logo) back in March 2021 but it was not finished yet when we got our first hurricane in May 2021. We plan to resume the design and deployment process as soon as the worst of the hurricane season is over.
Research Interests:
Seahorse Coastal Consulting specializes in technology integration and delivery of real time coastal modeling results from ADCIRC 24/7/365 to public and private sector decision makers in cooperation with University partners and Supercomputing centers.
Presentations and Reports:
2019 Annual Meeting presentation
2020 Annual Meeting presentation
2021 Annual Meeting presentation