Disaster prevention design criteria for the estuarine cities: New Orleans and Shanghai The lesson from Hurricane Katrina

The accurate prediction of the typhoon (hurricane) induced extreme sea environments is very important for the coastal structure design in areas influenced by typhoon (hurricane). In 2005 Hurricane Katrina brought a severe catastrophe in New Orleans by combined effects of hurricane induced extreme sea environments and upper flood of the Mississippi River. Like the New Orleans City, Shanghai is located at the estuarine area of the Changjiang River and the combined effect of typhoon induced extreme sea environments, flood peak runoff from the Changjiang River coupled with the spring tide is the dominate factor for disaster prevention design criteria. The Poisson-nested logistic trivariate compound extreme value distribution (PNLTCEVD) is a new type of joint probability model which is proposed by compounding a discrete distribution (typhoon occurring frequency) into a continuous multivariate joint distribution (typhoon induced extreme events). The new model gives more reasonable predicted results for New Orleans and Shanghai disaster prevention design criteria.