An upcoming NSF-funded research project led by the University of Georgia’s Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems will show that small, cheap sensors can have a big impact: gathering information to allow more accurate flood modeling. Small sensors, that is, and the hard work of many dedicated researchers and community members.
The project is based in Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan, an area that has historically been severely impacted by storms and flooding—causing millions of dollars of damage and loss of life.
This is in part due to a lack of accurate, real-time information about weather conditions and how they may impact flood conditions on the ground, as well as San Juan’s complex geography—with large mountains, vast river basins, and many communities living right up close to the rivers and the coast.
“Currently, in Puerto Rico, flood forecasts are essentially flying blind,” explained project lead, IRIS affiliate faculty member Felix Santiago-Collazo. “I met with several people there in April of last year at the National Weather Service office, and they were explaining that the only metric they have to predict flooding is through potential rainfall. They check the soil moisture on their monitors—which is also a rough forecast—and then they use their judgement to say, ‘Oh there might be a lot of rain that’s going to fall,’ and then to put up a flood warning.”
This is where the sensors come in. The sensor measures distance and detects obstacles between itself and the ground. It was developed by the FloodNet NYC project to collect real-time flood data across the city.
Continue reading at the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems.
Comments are closed