Helping Rural Counties to Enhance Flooding and Coastal Disaster Resilience and Adaptation
focused in the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Learn about the project.
Watch the video to learn more about the project, the importance locally and beyond, and learn how you can contribute to our cause to help the Copper Country prepare for the next major flooding event like the Father’s Day Flood. We have a neat tool built, but it needs to be fed data, and we need your help!
THE TOOLS
This mapping tool for the Western UP combines infrastructure data and flood map models into one platform with layers that can be turned on and off.
Some layer categories include:
Boundaries (counties, cities, townships, parcels)
Roads
Critical Infrastructure (building footprints, healthcare facilities, schools)
Hydrology (lakes, streams, watersheds)
Community Resilience Indicators
Flooding Models (inland, coastal)
Flood Events Pictures
This platform was designed to help emergency service professionals and other community leaders to make more informed decisions around flood risks. This tool can help influence decisions they will have to make in the case of a flooding event and how this will interplay with the environment both urban and rural.
See the Current Model! - In Development
This flood risk assessment tool simulates flooding by allowing the user to select an area of interest and simulate different flood intensities.
The tool then calculates estimates for the chosen area including the number people effected, farmland flooded, buildings effected, costs of damage, and a number of other factors.
See the Current Model! - In Development
A photo submission app that allows you to upload pictures that double check against the flood models and improve them using machine learning algorithms.
We need your help by uploading your pictures of past flooding to help inform the project! Also keep this tool in mind in the case that you experience or witness flooding in the future.
Submit Your Photos!
Project Goals
As our climate continues to move to more extremes, there has become an increased risk in the frequency of intense storms that have the potential to adversely affect our communities. This project aims to develop tools that can inform emergency managers, local officials, and other community members in rural communities to enhance flooding and coastal disaster resilience and adaptation.
A New Perspective to Rural Flood Modeling
Listen to the Thomas Oommen, the project director, speak about the project and how it can help rural communities.
RHRT Impact Potential
In 2018, Houghton County experienced a flood disaster which still to this day has left damage to homes, roads, and trails that many of us use daily. With more than $100 Million worth of public infrastructure damaged, we realized that having the latest tools to prepare and plan for future flooding events could be invaluable. By using advances in technology, crowdsourcing, and state-of-the-art geospatial visualization we are creating a comprehensive tool that will provide the latest flood hazard information to inform the decision makers in our communities.
Flood Hazard Primer Page - Learn more about what flood mitigation is and how our platform can help understand flood risk
Support Our Efforts
Michigan Technological University & the University of Washington, together with Civic partner Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region (WUPPDR), are collaborating to develop innovative methods that use remote sensing data resources, freely available geospatial processing service, and community member engagement (crowdsourcing) to address current data gaps for improved flood hazard modeling and enhancing community resilience in rural communities of the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Please take a moment to submit your photos below and take our quick survey. After completion also make sure to check out the current model on our GIS Visualization Tool.
Submit your photos to help with flood models in our area.
These will help improve our hazard managers in the Western UP
