1. DEEDS: Developing Engineering practices using Ecosystem Design Solutions
- Period
- 2022–2027
Supported by
DEEDS is a collaboration involving the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, the University of Delaware, and Louisiana State University. It develops nature-based approaches—particularly living shorelines and shellfish-enhanced wetlands—to reduce coastal hazards and strengthen the resilience of military installations, ecosystems, and nearby communities. The work combines site-suitability analysis, coastal and flood modeling, engineering design, ecological assessment, and community engagement. (Annual report)
The DEEDS-NBS work in Lewes focuses more specifically on mitigating nuisance flooding through integrated flood modeling, community surveys and engagement, and participatory selection of practical nature-based solutions.
Sub-projects (7)
- 1D-2D Coupled Hydrodynamic Modelingongoing
Coupling the 1D EPA-SWMM drainage network with the 2D Synxflow surface model for high-fidelity urban inundation mapping.
- Coastal Groundwater and Flooding in Lewesongoing
High-resolution groundwater modeling of tidal propagation and nuisance flooding beneath Lewes, Delaware.
- Flood Risk Perception and Community Engagement in Lewes, Delawareongoing
Studying how coastal communities perceive flood hazards and integrating local knowledge into resilience and hazard-mitigation planning.
- Interpolation of Precipitation Dataongoing
Generating an improved gridded precipitation dataset for Delaware to better capture flooding and water-quality risk under a changing climate.
- Machine-Learning Surrogates for Hydrologic Predictionongoing
CNN–LSTM surrogate models that emulate WRF-Hydro streamflow to accelerate scenario testing and explainable hydrologic analysis.
- Nuisance Flooding Digital Twinongoing
A high-resolution digital twin of Lewes, Delaware coupling urban drainage with surface topography to simulate sunny-day tidal flooding.
- PACE-GLM: Parallel Adaptive Calibration Enginecompleted
A phase-aware scheduling wrapper for PESTPP-GLM that reallocates idle compute threads during distributed hydrologic model calibration.