Abstract

Flood Fighting, GIS works at the Speed of an Emergency
Track: Disaster and Emergency Management
Authors: Jonathon Tonneson

In 2011 the State of North Dakota experienced flooding in every corner of the state. GIS became a mission critical system for fighting the flood. A Unified Engineering/GIS Command was led by the ND Dept of Emergency Services that consisted of multiple public and private consultants. This team used GIS to forecast the coming flood, determine where to place temporary levee structures, stage resources… etc. The Unified Command produced a multitude of GIS and engineering products throughout the flood; however, the most valuable product was flood inundation maps or flood depth maps that showed the depth of potential flooding for every area that was at risk.

Topics covered will include: remotes sensing, web applications, inundation modeling and more.