Design and analysis of a storm surge protection system for Reagan National Airport

According to leading climate studies, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, like many other coastal airports with low elevation, is at an increasing risk of storm surge events. Within the next two decades (by 2037), the chance of a single 3-foot flood occurring in one year surpasses 50%. A 3-foot flood event would result in water encroaching on runway safety areas as well as flooded parking lots at the Southern end of airport grounds. Issues such as these will lead to property damage, flight delays, and flight cancellations if a protective design is not in place. This paper examines the airport under storm conditions to compare different protection alternatives. The three alternatives are: permanent sea walls, temporary flood barriers, and an improved drainage design, namely increased out flow pump capacities. This paper, in part, presents a stochastic simulation of aircraft departures and arrivals using a queuing model. The constraints and general structure of aircraft arrival rates and amounts, departure rates and amounts, taxi times, and their applicable delays are estimated using historical data. The simulation receives arrival and departure schedules as an input. The simulation also receives data regarding future storm surge events which may cancel or hinder airport operations, namely arrivals and departures. The output of the simulation is the time an airport stays flooded once a storm surge event is initialized as well as the time it takes for an airport, specifically it's drainage system, to drain enough of the flood to resume operations at normal rates. With these results, the total cost of each alternative is calculated by summing up the cost of implementation and costs of delayed or cancelled operations. Each alternative's performance in minimizing these costs are compared using the utility vs. cost analysis to determine the optimal alternative.