East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR)

Boomi led the interior drainage modeling and analysis, and supported the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for this coastal protection initiative for New York City.

Project Owner

New York City Department of Design and Construction (NYC DDC)

Project Location

New York City

Project Context

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy struck New York City, causing approximately $19 billion in damage citywide. In the aftermath of the storm, the City undertook an extensive assessment of climate change vulnerabilities and began planning for a portfolio of long-term coastal protection projects that will prevent severe impacts from flooding.

The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) is one of the projects that emerged from this exercise, and is located in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 100-year floodplain. The ESCR project aims to offer protection to the community residents as well as the critical infrastructure—including a major pump station and an electrical substation that powers much of Lower Manhattan. The initial EIS assessment and the detailed design phase of the project involved extensive drainage modeling and analyses.

Project Challenge

Need for the models to account for joint occurrence of extreme rainfall and storm surges was one of the primary challenges. In addition, since the project covered a highly urbanized area covering jurisdictions of multiple agencies, creation of a single model capturing all of the existing conditions and planned projects was a challenge to the project team.

Our Solution

Based on data collected from CCTV surveys and by digitizing historic as-built drawings, our hydraulic modelers expanded the scale of the hydraulic model and created a robust model in InfoWorks ICM. This enhanced model was then used to perform detailed alternatives analyses during the design and construction phases of the project. We also coordinated and worked closely with other disciplinary teams to provide a holistic, value-focused infrastructure design solution to overcome the project challenges and thereby enabled our client in achieving the objectives set forth for this project.