To calculate the economic benefits of these measures, the expected annual damage (EAD) caused by flooding in St. Helena was determined. EAD is an economic flood damage estimation that would be expected to occur for a given location over an extended period of time.
To compute EAD, we used current US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) procedures, with software developed by the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC). These procedures integrate hydrologic, hydraulic, topographic geotechnical, and economic information to compute the flood damage.
Using the economic data, we developed a structure database that identified structure type, structure elevation, structure value, and content value. The geographic extent of the structure inventory is shown in the figure below. This database was then combined with flood frequency and levee geotechnical parameters to compute EAD and project benefits.
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