How Would It Be To Harness Futuristic Technology Against Natural Calamities

An arsenal of new techlogy is being put to test fighting floods this year as rivers inundate towns and farm fields across central United States. Drones, supercomputers and sonar that scans deep under water are helping to maintain flood control projects and predict just where rivers will roar out of ir banks.

Toger, se tools are putting detailed information to use in real time, enabling emergency manrs and people at risk to make decisions that can save lives and property, said Kristie Franz, associate professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at Iowa State University.

cost of this techlogy is coming down even as disaster recovery becomes more expensive, so “anything we can do to reduce costs of se floods and natural hazards is worth it,” she said. “Of course, loss of life, which you can’t put a dollar amount on, is certainly worth that as well.”

U.S. scientists said in ir spring wear outlook that 13 million people are at risk of major inundation, with more than 200 river gauges this week showing some level of flooding in Mississippi River basin, which drains vast middle of United States. Major flooding continues in places from Red River in rth Dakota to near mouth of Mississippi in Louisiana, a map from National Wear Service shows.
“re are over 200 million people that are under some elevated threat risk,” said Ed Clark, director of National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a flood forecasting hub.

Much of techlogy, such as  National Water Model , didn’t exist until recently. Fueled by supercomputers in Virginia and Florida, it came online about three years ago and expanded streamflow data by 700-fold, assembling data from 5 million river miles (8 million kilometers) of rivers and streams nationwide, including many smaller ones in remote areas.

“Our models simulate exactly what happens when rain falls on Earth and wher it runs off or infiltrates,” Clark said. “And so current conditions, wher that be sw pack or soil moisture in sw pack, well that’s something we can measure and monitor and kw.”

Emergency manrs and dam safety officials can see simulations of consequences of flood waters washing away a levee or crashing through a dam using techlogy developed at University of Mississippi — a web-based system kwn as DSS-WISE . software went online in 2017 and quickly provided simulations that informed response to heavy rains that damd spillways at nation’s tallest dam in rrn California. program also helped forecast flooding after Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana that year.

Engineers monitoring levees along Mississippi River have been collecting and checking data using a geographic information system produced by Esri, said Nick Bidlack, levee safety program manr for Memphis district of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. company produces mapping tools such as an interactive site showing nation’s largest rivers and ir aver monthly flow.

On Mississippi River, flood inspectors use smartphones or tablets in field to input data into map-driven forms for water levels and locations of iperable flood gates, seeps, sand boils or levee slides, which are cracks or ditches in slopes of an earn levee. Photos, videos and or data are sent to an emergency flood operation center in real time, allowing Corps officials to visualize any problems and ir exact location, instantly informing response, Bidlack said.

“If people in field have concerns about something, y can let us kw to go out re and look at it,” Bidlack said. “re’s a picture associated with it, a description of it, and it helps us take care of it.”

Corps engineers are increasingly flying drones to get ir own aerial photography and video of flooded areas y can’t orwise get to because of high water or rough terrain, said Edward Dean, a Corps engineer.

“We can reach areas that are unreachable,” Dean said.

Corps also w uses high-definition sonar in its daily operations to survey riverbed, pinpointing where maintenance work needs to be done, said Corps engineer Andy Simmerman. Memphis district uses a 26-foot survey boat called Tiger Shark, with a sonar he that looks like an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner and collects millions of points per square inch of data, Simmerman said.

techlogy has helped m find cars and trucks that have been dumped into river, along with weak spots in levees.

“se areas are 20 to 80 feet underwater, we’d never get to see m without sonar,” Simmerman said. “ water never gets low eugh for us to see a lot of se failures.”

During recent flooding near Cairo, Illiis, a culvert that should have been closed was sending water onto dry side of a levee. sonar pointed engineers to precise location of a log that was stuck 20 feet deep in murky water, keeping culvert open. Plastic sheathing and sandbags were brought in to stop flow and save land below.

“ sonar definitely me a difference,” said Simmerman. “A big success.”

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