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Main Authors: Zhao, Jinpai, Cerrone, Albert, Valseth, Eirik, Westerink, Leendert, Dawson, Clint
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21743
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author Zhao, Jinpai
Cerrone, Albert
Valseth, Eirik
Westerink, Leendert
Dawson, Clint
author_facet Zhao, Jinpai
Cerrone, Albert
Valseth, Eirik
Westerink, Leendert
Dawson, Clint
contents Storm surge forecasting plays a crucial role in coastal disaster preparedness, yet existing machine learning approaches often suffer from limited spatial resolution, reliance on coastal station data, and poor generalization. Moreover, many prior models operate directly on unstructured spatial data, making them incompatible with modern deep learning architectures. In this work, we introduce a novel approach that projects unstructured water elevation fields onto structured Red Green Blue (RGB)-encoded image representations, enabling the application of Convolutional Long Short Term Memory (ConvLSTM) networks for end-to-end spatiotemporal surge forecasting. Our model further integrates ground-truth wind fields as dynamic conditioning signals and topo-bathymetry as a static input, capturing physically meaningful drivers of surge evolution. Evaluated on a large-scale dataset of synthetic storms in the Gulf of Mexico, our method demonstrates robust 48-hour forecasting performance across multiple regions along the Texas coast and exhibits strong spatial extensibility to other coastal areas. By combining structured representation, physically grounded forcings, and scalable deep learning, this study advances the frontier of storm surge forecasting in usability, adaptability, and interpretability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_21743
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Storm Surge in Color: RGB-Encoded Physics-Aware Deep Learning for Storm Surge Forecasting
Zhao, Jinpai
Cerrone, Albert
Valseth, Eirik
Westerink, Leendert
Dawson, Clint
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
Storm surge forecasting plays a crucial role in coastal disaster preparedness, yet existing machine learning approaches often suffer from limited spatial resolution, reliance on coastal station data, and poor generalization. Moreover, many prior models operate directly on unstructured spatial data, making them incompatible with modern deep learning architectures. In this work, we introduce a novel approach that projects unstructured water elevation fields onto structured Red Green Blue (RGB)-encoded image representations, enabling the application of Convolutional Long Short Term Memory (ConvLSTM) networks for end-to-end spatiotemporal surge forecasting. Our model further integrates ground-truth wind fields as dynamic conditioning signals and topo-bathymetry as a static input, capturing physically meaningful drivers of surge evolution. Evaluated on a large-scale dataset of synthetic storms in the Gulf of Mexico, our method demonstrates robust 48-hour forecasting performance across multiple regions along the Texas coast and exhibits strong spatial extensibility to other coastal areas. By combining structured representation, physically grounded forcings, and scalable deep learning, this study advances the frontier of storm surge forecasting in usability, adaptability, and interpretability.
title Storm Surge in Color: RGB-Encoded Physics-Aware Deep Learning for Storm Surge Forecasting
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21743